At first look, Chattanooga seems like most mid-sized cities in the South. It has a population of 171,000. Chattanooga has a Coke bottling operation, a regional hospital, distribution centers for companies that include Amazon.com, and a Volkswagen plant. The average household makes much less — at just under $35,000 — than the average national figure.
There are some other factors that keep gas prices low in general. The state gas tax is only $0.214 per gallon, which is 36th in the country. At $2.73, Chattanooga’s home state of Tennessee has the second lowest gas price of all states. Just as important to these things, the state is adjacent to two others — Mississippi and Alabama — that sit on the Gulf of Mexico, the home to many of the nation’s refineries. Transporting gasoline to Tennessee is cheap compared to getting it to Iowa or Wisconsin, much further to the north.
Looked at through the lens of why gas prices are high or low state by state and city by city, Chattanooga has every major reason for low gas prices. Places with the most expensive gas prices, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City, have none of these.
Gas prices across the country may continue to fall, but Chattanooga’s will fall lower than those of almost any other city. The city is indeed an aberration.
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