Gasoline consumption continues to slide in Hawai'i as record high gas prices have persuaded more motorists to cut back on driving.

State tax collection data show Hawai'i motorists used about 169 million gallons of gas from December to April, down about 14.7 percent from 198 million gallons consumed during the same five months a year earlier.

A number of studies of gasoline consumption in Hawai'i over the years concluded that driving patterns and demand for fuel here have been relatively fixed because residents do less pleasure driving than motorists on the Mainland. However, the latest tax statistics suggest that with the recent record high prices, motorists on O'ahu and the Neighbor Islands have found ways to cut back.

This comes as no surprise to Puna resident Barney Sheffield, a golfer who used to drive regularly across the Big Island to play the Kona links on his days off. He skips the Kona trips now, or gets together with a group of golf buddies to car pool and share the expense of the trip.

"It's definitely gone up way too much," Sheffield said of the price of gas. "Somebody needs to take a look at it and see why we're seeing such astronomical increases."

The AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report said the average price of unleaded gasoline was a record $4.382 per gallon in Honolulu yesterday. The average was $4.518 in Hilo and $4.667 in Wailuku.

Sheffield, who is disaster coordinator for the American Red Cross on the Big Island, said his organization also adjusted its operations about a year ago as gasoline prices surged.

The Red Cross used to ask its volunteers to drive to Kona or Hilo for training, but now the organization's trainers drive to rural areas to work with the volunteers close to home.

"Now we're trying to take the programs more to the people themselves in the communities, realizing that they're not wanting to drive outside of their community for training," he said.

George Curtis, a semi-retired physics professor with the University of Hawai'i who lives in Honomu, said he and his wife use just one of his two cars at a time now. "We are more careful now about making sure we make joint trips and trying to coordinate and consolidate errands," he said.

Curtis said people don't seem to gripe about high gas prices as much as they used to, even though the price seems to keep edging upward.

"It's just a given; people have given up complaining about it," Curtis said. "The changes percentage-wise have been smaller lately, but it's just as bad in dollars."

Some O'ahu residents report that traffic seems a bit lighter, and traffic counters set up by the state Department of Transportation on H-1 Freeway at the Halawa interchange earlier this year showed nearly a 19 percent decline in the daily average flow of vehicles in March.

Sales of monthly passes for TheBus were up for the first quarter of the year as well.

Having fewer cars and trucks on the road may make life easier for motorists in peak drive times, but there is a drawback: Less gasoline sold means the state and counties collect less in gas taxes, which means those governments have less money available to spend on road maintenance.

A bit more than half of the gas tax collections are transferred to a special fund used by the state Department of Transportation for repairs, and a bit less than half is transferred to the counties.

Advertiser staff writer Greg Wiles contributed to this report