{"id":258702,"date":"2026-04-09T03:25:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258702\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T03:25:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T03:25:24","slug":"bay-area-super-commuters-being-hit-hard-by-rising-gas-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/258702\/","title":{"rendered":"Bay Area super commuters being hit hard by rising gas prices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the price of gas in California pushes toward $6 a gallon, Bay Area drivers are holding on for a miracle.\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>&#8220;I mean, you watch numbers keep going up, and you just pray that the numbers stop, and it just keeps going,&#8221; Carlos Martinez said.<\/p>\n<p> Martinez is categorized as a super commuter, or someone who drives for 90 minutes or more to get to work. He takes the two-hour ride from Roseville to San Francisco twice a week for his job in the city.<\/p>\n<p> He&#8217;s commuted for nearly four years, but recently the spikes of gas have increased, surpassing his monthly budget.\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0&#8220;Now, I would say the commute, or to fill up, is about $100 a week,&#8221; Martinez said. &#8220;When I commute down to San Francisco, actually stay with family, either in Walnut Creek or in San Mateo. So, I have to add that to my drive as well.&#8221;\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>Martinez&#8217;s monthly gas expense averaged in at $500 dollars last month since the start of the Iran War. He even picked up odd jobs to offset costs, but the pain at the pump is a constant.<\/p>\n<p> \u00a0&#8220;It&#8217;s not ideal, but that&#8217;s what we have so far,&#8221; Martinez said.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>For him, the commute is the only option. And according to research from the Bay Area Equity Atlas, his situation isn&#8217;t unique. About 3 to 5 percent of the Bay Area&#8217;s workforce are super commuters, like Martinez.<\/p>\n<p> It&#8217;s a group that is undoubtedly being hit hard by gas prices, Severin Borenstein, an energy expert and professor at UC Berkeley, said.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0&#8220;There&#8217;s nothing they can really do about crude oil prices and even California gas prices,&#8221; Borenstein said.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>The Trump administration ordered a two-week ceasefire in Iran on Tuesday night. The markets immediately reacted.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>&#8220;The moment that President Trump announced the ceasefire, the price of crude oil dropped about $15 per barrel. It was up around $110, and it ended around $95; that difference will start to show up in the price of gasoline,&#8221; Borenstein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> \u00a0He told CBS News NorCal the market will remain volatile. It&#8217;s a fact Martinez knows well. \u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>&#8220;I do believe that they are going to go up a little bit before they come back down. Hopefully, I&#8217;m wrong on that,&#8221; Martinez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the price of gas in California pushes toward $6 a gallon, Bay Area drivers are holding on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[147,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-258702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-gas-prices","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}