(The Center Square) – Travelers driving through Kentucky will be paying a lot less at the pump this Fourth of July holiday compared to last year. However, there are some major discrepancies depending on where they’re headed.
According to AAA, Kentucky’s statewide average for a gallon of regular unleaded was $3.254 on Monday. That’s down from nearly eight cents from the week before.
A year ago, the average price in the Bluegrass State was $4.529. It now costs more than $20 less to fill up a car with a 16-gallon gas tank that it did a year ago.
Despite the significant drop from last year, drivers nationally are still paying more to fill up than they did in recent years, even before the pandemic. The national average on Monday was $3.535. The average retail price for gas for the week ending July 1, 2019 was $2.713, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“The previous [national] record average high price for gas on July 4th [before last year] was $4.10 in 2008, while the low was $1.39 in 2001,” AAA spokesperson Andrew Gross said in a statement. “Yet despite currently elevated prices, drivers are not cutting back on travel this summer.”
AAA expects more than 50 million people to travel for the holiday, with more than 86% of those travelers forecasted to do so by car. Many drivers from the Midwest cross through Kentucky on their way to Florida, the Gulf states and other southern destinations.
In some parts of Kentucky, drivers can get close to that national average from four years ago. Eleven out of Kentucky’s 120 counties have average prices below $3, with Bell County being the least expensive at $2.871.
In Daviess County, a western Kentucky county home to Owensboro, Kentucky’s fourth-largest city, the average price for a gallon is $2.904. In Whitley County, a southeastern Kentucky county on the Interstate 75 corridor, the average price was $2.99.
On the flip end of that is Jefferson County. The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded in Kentucky’s most populous county and a key connector to southeastern and midwestern states was $3.72.
Part of the reason gas prices in the Louisville area are higher than elsewhere in Kentucky due to the federal government’s reformulated gas mandate on the region. RFG critics say the fuel blend is up to 30 more per gallon than regular blends.
Of Kentucky’s neighbors, only Tennessee has a lower average price, $3.073. Illinois has the highest at $3.897, followed by West Virginia ($3.381), Indiana ($3.348), Virginia ($3.307), Ohio ($3.291) and Missouri ($3.265).
