It's official: gas prices have hit an all time high. And, while the national average is $1.80 per gallon, gas in the San Francisco Bay Area averages $2.10 per gallon, 30 cents above the national average.

San Francisco tails only San Diego, then Los Angeles for the highest gas prices in California. While gas prices have skyrocketed throughout the country, they have gone up an average of nearly 50 cents since December in San Francisco.

An Arco AM PM in Mill Valley had the cheapest gas in the Bay Area as of Sunday-- $1.99, according to Sanfrangasprices.com, whose motto is, "Informed customers are wise customers."

The same site logged South San Francisco and Belmont as having the highest price in the Bay Area with $2.39.

Photojournalism major Ted Mendoza said that he pays about $2.39 per gallon to fill the gas tank of his 1990 Ford Mustang at the gas station near his home in Daly City.

"It costs me about $25 per week to fill my gas tank, in order to get to school and work," Mendoza said.

In comparison to cities such as Chico where gas prices are about 20 cents less than San Francisco's, an SUV owner, for example, could be paying $5 more to fill their tank at an San Francisco gas station.

One SF State student, however, believes that we are not paying enough for gas. Graduate Film student Sahra Girshick believes that if prices were even higher, public transportation would be utilized more frequently.

Girshick, who divides her commute time between driving and taking public transportation, has benefited from having to fill the gas tank of her Honda Civic once every few weeks.

"We have it easy here, compared to a lot of European countries," Girshick said. "That's why there's so much traffic. People would rather drive than be inconvenienced into taking public transportation because compared to other countries, gas here is still affordable."

Girshick might just have a point. While gas prices have indeed skyrocketed, they have not gotten to the point of being unaffordable. After all, according to the U.S. census, 69 percent of workers in San Francisco still commute by car.

BART's Web site header, which states: "Avoid high gas prices, give BART a try," just might be the advent into more public transportation usage and less highway congestion by one-person occupied automobiles if the uphill trend in gas prices continue.