It's crossover time! Recently on my Web site, ResearchBuzz, I covered a site from the AAA that provides gas price information from tens of thousands of stations around the country. I then heard from MapQuest, which has launched a gas portal that provides information on gas prices from more than 100,000 stations around the country. Not only that, but the MapQuest resource also provides information on alternative fuel prices. It's available at http://www.mapquest.com/gasprices .

From the front page of the site you can enter what you're looking for (a particular grade of gas, diesel fuel, or a particular kind of alternate fuel or all alternate fuels.) You can then specify a city and state, or a zip code. I did an search for alternative fuels from zip code 27605.

MapQuest gave me 22 results, displayed on a map ten at a time. Click on a marker number for details about the place and what they're selling. Some of these markers I was a bit surprised to see -- can the general public really buy biodiesel from the Wake County DOT Method Shop? And I didn't know you could get propane from U-Haul (most of the alternative places have propane.)

MapQuest updates these gas prices frequently, and if you're just looking for prices (or alternative fuels) in one area, this is very useful. In the future there are plans to add information about gas station amenities and the ability to get gas prices across a route in order to plan a trip. If you need to do that now, however, you might want to check out AAA's TripTik, which does offer this functionality.