Long have there been attacks on reliable and cost-effective gas-powered vehicles. Back during the historic oil embargoes, critics insisted on tiny cars and high miles per gallon figures. And those pushing the multiple points of the campaign have never backed down.
But now a new ideology has surfaced in the leftist city of Denver.
It's that there apparently are too many gas stations at which consumers can refuel, so two city council members are working on a plan to correct that.
They want to ban any station from being developed within a quarter mile of another.
It is Complete Colorado that explained the ideology created by council members Paul Kashmann and Amanda Sawyer.
They "have decided that gas stations - apparently uniquely among Denver's many retail businesses - are taking too much space away from other priorities such as housing. In response to this deadly threat to housing density, they are close to proposing a zoning change precluding new gas stations from being built inside a quarter-mile buffer zone around existing stations."
The report noted it isn't the first such attack on the city's drivers, as the tax-funded Regional Transportation District complained during the COVID pandemic that parking lots should be replaced with housing.
It seems that there have been 10 new stations in the city in recent years, bringing that total to 180, not even a 6% increase.
The plan "doesn't say if this is an actual trend, a recent spurt, or how many of those (if any) are replacing stations that have closed. The report claims 318 permanently closed retail gas stations in Denver, or 77% more than the total now operating."
The report pointed out Sawyers' complaints are "somewhat ironic, " given that her own Council District 5 serves as gasoline desert, with only two stations not bordering other districts, "meaning that those low on gas already have longer drives to fill up."
Councilman Kashmann says that the city is allowing gas stations that 'people don't want and we don't need.' Except that nobody appointed Paul Kashmann the arbiter of what businesses the city needs, and that apparently people do both want and need them, given that there are enough gas purchases - even before the desired increased density - to keep them all in business," the report said.