By Scott Etkin
With the war in Iran now in its third week, gas prices have surpassed $5 per gallon on the Upper West Side.
As of Tuesday morning at the Mobil station on West 96th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, regular gas was priced at $5.19 per gallon, extra at $5.59 per gallon, and supreme at $5.99 per gallon. The Mobil station is the only gas station on the Upper West Side – where approximately 25 percent of households own a car, according to the NYC Department of Transportation – though there are others in surrounding neighborhoods.
Tamara Igel, who has run the Mobil station for 22 years and took over the business from her father, said on a call with West Side Rag that customers have started buying less gas, which has negatively affected the business, which was already under pressure following an especially snowy winter that limited driving.
“The price goes up every day, so we have to recalculate every day or we lose money,” she said. “I’m suffering, too. It’s not better for me. It’s much worse for me.”
Igel said that while she understands why customers are upset about paying more than normal, she hopes the maintenance work that the station provides is an important enough service to offset that and earn the community’s loyalty at this difficult time.
“When they [residents] get their holes in their tires from all the construction stuff and all the potholes, and we help them, they’re grateful to us,” she said. “Yet, the extra $10 on a tank of gas … throws them over the edge.”
The price of gas has increased by around 50 cents per gallon since the war began on February 28th, according to an attendant at the Mobil station. Since Sunday afternoon, prices have ticked up by 10 cents per gallon, and as usual, they are higher in Manhattan than many other parts of the state.
Across New York County, the average price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.64, up from $2.97 a month ago, according to a fuel price tracker maintained by AAA. Historically, the highest recorded average price in New York County was $5.21. This took place in the summer of 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Experts have said that there will be long-term disruptions to the oil supply chain due to the war in Iran, even if the violence ends soon.
Oil facilities across the Arab Gulf (for example, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar) are manually shutting valves to slow down the flow of petroleum – a process known as a “shut-in,” according to Richard Nephew, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
“Shut-ins don’t just happen and then you turn a switch and everything’s back together. You have to get production back online, and that can be pretty time-consuming” because pauses can cause corrosion and structural damage that needs to be repaired, he was quoted as saying in an article in Fortune.
Igel emphasized that during a previous disruption to the oil supply chain caused by Hurricane Sandy, she did not raise prices to make a profit, and there were lines of cars around the block coming to the station to refuel.
“We really are a community business,” said Igel. “We need our neighbor’s support now.”
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Fill up in Jersey. Good place for gas. Lousy place for just about everything else.
I live in a great area if NJ. As a former UWS native, it’s a pretty great place to live and no problem parking.
Jersey, The Bronx, Westchester, Queens…
Most of the neighborhood car owners don’t drive around Manhattan and don’t need to pay these amounts for more than the gas needed to get 20 miles away.
Gas stations in Manhattan cater to vehicles operated for commercial purposes who have no incentive to leave the island to save money.
Most of the vehicles at the Shell station on 96th and 1st are taxi drivers.
Starting in November, New Jersey will again have Loews Theatre on Journal Square. New Jersey has some beautiful suburbs: Montclair, Sommerville. Ridgewood.
wonderful news!
There’s a good Symphony
Most people around here get gas on the Palisades I would bet. It’s $3.69 this morning on Queens Boulevard right over the bridge.
Well, you know, there is a bridge toll to consider there.
Or a $9 fee for driving maybe a block or two into the congestion zone to use the 59th Street (Ed Koch) Bridge.
The bridge to Queens and back is free it’s the congestion charge. So the same gas station is up to $3.79 this morning.
Why are progressives starting to care about high prices just now? They didn’t between 2021 and 2024…
Alex,
Biden is a rightwing Democrat, no progressives supported him. They tolerated him because he was a tiny bit better than Trump.
Greatest president ever! From making Mexico pay for the wall to keeping gas and food prices at their lowest ever to never starting a war, Drumpf just keeps on delivering! Making America Grate Again!
Still not sure what a Drumpf is.
I think it means “we have an a**hole for a president” but I could be mistaken
Drumpf was Donald Trump’s grandfather’s original family name in Germany — it was not Trump. His grandfather ‘s name was Freidrich Drumpf.
You win the FIFA Nobel Golden Globe Oscar, Lifetime Achievement Award!
Mexico didn’t need to pay for the wall. Immigration stopped because the new President enforced the law. So they didn’t have to pay for a wall, and neither did we.
Gas and food inflation has dropped off the highest inflation rate since in the early 1980s. It is now below historical averages.
Not a fan of war, for sure, but I’m also not defending the Iranian Government’s well-known slaughter of it citizens.
75% of the cut in immigration was complete by 2024 under Biden. And please keep up: trump is spending 46 billion on the wall under the ‘big, beautiful bill.’
Inflation soared because the people in charge in 2020 did nothing as supply chains shattered and made no plans for recovery, and because in April 2020 donald trump cut a two year deal with OPEC & Putin slashing production and creating a shortage in 2021. Even Fox Business News covered that.
By 2023 it was coming down and Biden left trump lower inflation than we have now.
Biden left trump higher growth, about 4X the job creation, lower unemployment, and yes, lower inflation than we have today.
And trump dropped ‘regime change’ from his agenda about 24 hours into this war he stupidly started.
Illegally enforced the law? Such a myopic statement.
>the Iranian Government’s well-known slaughter of it citizens.
oh, the irony
Ummm, they did murder up to 30,000 of their own citizens who were protesting the regime. Not that you’d read that in the NY Times …..
How silly of you to say that, of course it was all over the NYTimes
The most recent government report has annual inflation at 3.2% and oil is well over $100/barrel at the moment and increasing with no sign of a reversal which is causing gas prices to skyrocket. So what are you even talking about?
And by “enforced the law” you mean illegally deporting US citizens and others legally entitled to be in the country, not to speak of ICE murdering citizens.
No US citizens were deported and no US citizens were murdered. Oh, Pretti and Goode? Yeah, they tried to kill law enforcement officers ….
Holy Philip Zimbardo, Batman!
In addition to Renée Good and Alex Pretti, peace-loving Ruben Ray Martinez and Keith Porter would beg to differ with you on the murder of U.S. citizens by DHS — if only they were still alive. As for mere deportations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportations_of_U.S._citizens_in_the_second_Trump_administration#Deportations
And then there are the disappearances: https://www.salon.com/2026/03/17/black-hole-el-salvador-disappearing-us-deportees-into-cecot-rights-group-says/
Wake up and smell the fascism, true believers.
That’s a pretty novel interpretation of what we saw with our own eyes.
Question: IF Goode was driving AT the ICE officer how is it possible that she was killed by a shot to the side of her head, through the side window?
Why were they there ? They should have stayed away
Yes what in the world were they doing exercising their constitutional rights to protest, do they think this is a free country or something?!
The lefty livable streets people value constitutional rights only when it fits their agenda.
When President Biden left office in January 2025, the inflation rate was approximately 2.9%. That was nowhere near the highest inflation rates since the early 1980s.
So then who did pay for the wall that was built? It sure didn’t pay for itself.
As for the price of gas… the price of gas rose over $1/gallon for the time in 1979, during the energy crisis. Adjusted for today’s dollars, that would be $4.44 according to the Federal Reserve. So exact how is the price of gas below historical averages?
Depends what state you are in.
In case you haven’t heard our local leaders, everyone is supposed to be riding a bike So gas prices shouldn’t matter
I take public transportation and walk most places so certainly has a more limited effect on the 75% of UWS households who don’t own a car, it pays to be financially and environmentally prudent.
I am willing to bet your Uber or Lyft account tells a different story. At the end of the day using transit is a sacrifice. If there is one thing that the pandemic has taught us, is that there are limits as to how much sacrifice people are willing to accept. If there weren’t everyone would still be wearing a mask, social distancing and remote school.
Also even if you don’t have a car, you have friends, relatives and others that rely on a car or motor vehicle, also whatever you buy or the workers that service you use a motor vehicle. Urbanists want to be the arbiter of who gets to use a car and don’t use a car and it cannot work that way.
I doubt you regularly use public transportation to go far places or walk far places. It is a privilege to have most of your life in NYC within the same 10 or 15 or so trendy neighborhoods.
Wow! Way to think everyone lives and thinks like you! It’s MUCH more dangerous (in terms of injury and death) for an able bodied person statistically to get into an Uber than to get on the 2 train. Look it up.
And, yes, I want to be able to walk around safely and in peace in my own city without having constantly to watch my back for speeding Cadillac Escalades with two people in them.
Move to Paramus. You’ll enjoy the excitement of a world made for cars!
If we told “livable streets” advocates to go move to Europe, they would riot. Why don’t they live in Copenhagen if they have so much of a grind to axe against American culture?
In fact it is the urbanists who want everyone to live and think the way that they do. Regardless of statistics, you cannot do anything about what people think and feel. People are worried about subway crime and disorder, women are worried about being grabbed inappropriately on the subway (and men being wrongfully arrested over a genuine misunderstanding or accident, there are criminal cases the Manhattan DA has had to dismiss like that), people don’t want to smell others armpits.
Most urbanists want everyone to live and think like them. Thats the only kind of people they want, although it’s unspoken. The minute they feel uncomfortable on a 2 train, they go to Lyft, that is a fact. It’s easy to say when you have anti-car advocates living in Manhattan rental apartments costing 5 figures. More than the cost of a mortgage and property taxes in Paramus!
Wrong as usual Eugene! I occasionally take a yellow cab in a pinch but using transit is genuinely more convenient most of the time and less expensive 100% of the time, even for far away places.
Some people have made decisions to be reliant on their vehicles or may prefer to drive but there’s no reason to subsidize those choices with cheap parking or gas.
Today it is “subsidizing these choices”, tomorrow you will rail against subsidizing transit you don’t like. When we “subsidize” parking, we are subsidizing the facilitation of movement that would be much more complicated to do with transit, we are also subsidizing competition to our transit system and a safety valve to our transit system. It is a vital yardstick to the MTA’s performance. Our transit system needs to be something people genuinely want to be on. I do not get that impression with the subways and local buses, I get the impression that they are merely tolerated. Also that the MTA’s job is to make politically uncomfortable decisions no elected official wants to be held directly accountable for.
I doubt Eugene is wrong. Most people are multimodal and don’t seek to impose their values on others like a lot of the livable streets folks. They want the streets livable for themselves and those that they deem worthy of living here, or those which they can use as virtue signaling talking points.
gas prices shouldn’t matter? Windmills cause cancer?
Or trains / buses.
The buses are free now, right?
Electricity comes from fossil fuels!
Electricity comes from a wide variety of sources, including fossil fuels, nuclear, hydroelectric and geothermal. What size rock do you live under, exactly?
“Including fossil fuels” and they make up a large proportion of how electricity is powered. The personal attack was not necessary unless you believe that people who don’t live on the UWS but have an interest here are beneath you.
I see youre sarcasm challenged
Congrats if you voted for this 🙂
Always wondered about the history of this specific gas station. It’s an indoor/outdoor pump and so close to residential . Must be some sort of backstory as to why they remain .. anyone know ?
Urbanists want gas to be $10.
Trump did spend many years as a Manhattan skyscraper developer!
Like everyone critical of you supports Trump. What about your guy Mark Gorton boosting RFK Jr.?
I don’t really understand what this means, but Trump himself has been trying to block congestion pricing and mass transit funding (which makes us more vulnerable to oil supply shocks).
The obsession with Mark Gorton as the only reason urbanist policies get any traction doesn’t make sense – 66% of households don’t own cars in the neighborhood! Cynically, you would expect policies that primarily benefit non-car owners at the expense of car owners would to be very popular in a democracy where non-car owners outnumber car owners 2-1!
Does every anti-urbanist have perfect liberal opinions? Vicky Paladino?
It’s just plain silly to assume that folk who don’t own cars don’t like them or want them around.
Oh, Mark Gorton now heads a major ant-vax group. There’s no end to the uses he’s put his ill gotten money to.
For a while when Justice Engoron’s fines were in effect trump was fined a higher amount than Gorton for his frauds. But the Appellate Division reversed that so now Gorton’s record for fines and settlements for his business practices remains about 7X trump’s.
If you think trump’s sleazy well, what follows?
The vast majority of Manhattanites who don’t own cars don’t have an axe to grind against those that do the way urbanists have that axe to grind.
Mark Gorton is the single largest donor to transportation causes in NYC. Without Mark Gorton, the “livable streets movement” in NYC would have no traction. Urbanists have even admitted this fact openly.
Speaking of Trump, he would be more than happy to keep congestion pricing in exchange for Penn Station being named after him and being developed in his vision.
Does every anti-urbanist have perfect liberal opinions? Yes they are there. There’s one running for Assembly downtown who is the Vice Chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party, Mariama James.
Is America great again?
This is sad. It’s an important gas station and they do go the extra mile with service, even if you’re just putting air in your tires they’ll do it for you at no charge. Nice people.
Try and support them if you can. We need our neighborhood services.
You drive a Prius easy for you to say
Yes some of us are FORCED to drive HUGE SUVs, we have no free will to purchase more efficient vehicles!
I know a family of 5 who lives on the UWS and they use that SUV!
That gas station is the worst. It’s a multi car collision waiting to happen. You have to back out of the pump into high speed racers trying to get on the west side highway. It is way way safer to get gas upstate or new jersey
Considering the price of everything in NYC, this is a puny price to pay for a free Iran.
Will urbanists be willing to pay higher prices for goods and services to get their utopia? I think so when you have leadership in urbanist organizations living in $16,000 a month rental apartments!
Have you looked at what rent costs in NYC these days? Certainly there is a premium to live in walkable neighborhoods.
I’d rather have the UWS of the 1970s and 1980s, with an OTB on West 72nd Street, grit, muggings and all. The Times Square with porn theaters, than a Manhattan that has prominent “livable streets” advocates that see themselves as Robert Moses and those that disagree with them as beneath them even if never spoken openly.
There is a premium to live in a neighborhood with historic district landmarking too! Want to know what creates that premium? Social expectations. Social expectations that the younger generations have that older generations just simply did not have when you had to walk around the UWS with “mugging money”.
If we decided one day to block every bridge and tunnel into Manhattan from all vehicular traffic. Block all NJ Transit, LIRR and Metro-North trains too leaving only the subway or walking and biking, you’d realize that Manhattan is an emperor with no clothes.
West Berlin was walled in and physically isolated in a way Manhattan currently isn’t and at least it had Tempelhof and Tegel Airports and three air corridors, Manhattan doesn’t even have that!
Why are we paying billions to free Iran??
If you think Iran is “free,” or is going to be, you are more delusional than you look.
Does this post make me look fat?
I would love to be free from urbanists and it is a much smaller ask!
June 2022 peak was already at $5, where was the outrage then from our good old progressive neighbors?
You might want to provide some context here.
“Gas prices hit a record high of over $5/gallon in June 2022 due to a combination of severe, compound factors: surging fuel demand as pandemic travel restrictions eased, low supply inventories, and significant disruptions to global oil markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This created a tight market where oil prices soared above $100 per barrel.”
So there was less outrage because people (those with brains…) understood why it was happening. They complained, for sure. But they also accepted it because of the contributing factors.
Change the channel.
As all the gas and oil fields burn, this is just a start.
I hope gas prices stay high nationally; in fact I hope they go higher. High gas prices influence voters and can help swing elections.
It’s the UWS. It’s a given.
That gas station is the most expensive gas station – even before the war in Iran. I only go there if I have no other choice, which is not very often because I refuse to pay so much in gas to them, but I typically buy in NJ, or in Long Island/Queens when I am there.
Mamdani will handle that, right?
This station is consistently about $5/gallon. There’s plenty of other stations in W 125th St. That’s still UWS
Consult a map please. 125 is harlem’s main drag
75% of UWS households won’t be affected by this news on their day to day – food prices are already on steady inflationary paths
“Wholesale prices rose 0.7% in February, much more than expected and up 3.4% annually” (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/18/ppi-inflation-february-2026.html)
Therefrom: “Goods prices rose 1.1% on the month. Food prices rose 2.4% while energy was up 2.3%. Within food, the index for fresh and dry vegetables soared 48.9%.” (Vegans, take note!)
Sorry, but the most recent reportage on this I have is from yesterday; perhaps the situation has improved in the past few hours.
Who cares? Just take one of Mamdani’s free buses. I assume all his free buses are electric, right? So hop on board!
At $3 paying the fare is already a great deal!
What about the Shell station at 3260 Broadway, New York, NY 10027 (129th St) Good mechanics, U Haul rental, and access to the WS Highway.
Feelin gassy?
This gas station has always been a ripoff.