When I drove cab in Anchorage, gas was $1.20 or so a gallon.  Still, the Muni hadn't revised rates in nearly a decade and a half and they wouldn't be revised until several years later.  While the rising cost of gas is obvious to everyone, the rising cost of insurance (and numerous other things required to run a business) isn't, and hence everything else along the chain including what the driver pays and what the customer pays.  If/when Uber is established here, I wonder if it will be economical to the driver once they realize the necessity for commercial insurance and further realize that we're a much tinier, much higher-risk market than many other places, and therefore drivers are more susceptible to being taken to the cleaners on premiums.