Two weeks ago, after the one-day oil buying boycott, I issued a more appropriate one-week challenge to consume less gasoline. Also see hereWell, the week long challenge ended this past Sunday so it's time to take a look at how it went. I had a few people say they were up for the challenge and I encourage all of them to join in with comments about how it went. Or didn't. And anyone else who has recently made an attempt to consume less gasoline feel free to share the story of your efforts.
Here's my story...
First off, I normally take the Metro or carpool to commute - so I wasn't going to be able to conserve a huge amount over what I normally do. I live fairly close to the Metro station - a walk (approx 30 minutes) or a short drive - and I usually drive. So this short drive was my primary target.
Monday: Got a ride over to the Metro and walked home. Success.
Tuesday: Was running late and missed my shot at a ride and the bus so I drove. No Improvement.
Wednesday: Worked from home. Success.
Thursday: Rode the bus both ways. Success.
Friday: Missed the bus again so I drove. No Improvement.
For a week's worth of commuting I succeeded in cutting back to 2/5 of normal driving. Not bad - although the absolute impact was negligible since I have such a short drive.
I had some after work activities which I drove to by myself. That's normal consumption so no improvement here. Although I did spend some time on the highway and drove slower than normal to save a very small bit of gasoline.
I also drove to visit some friends over the holiday weekend. They live just short of 200 miles away and I forced myself to drive slow. Actually, it was the speed limit for most of journey - 65 mph - but since hardly anyone drives the speed limit it sure seemed slow. This did save some gasoline. I am going to write a separate diary that will go into detail about comparing highway driving speeds.
Was it difficult? Not really. There was a noticeable comfort I felt on the days I drove because I wasn't stuck relying on someone else or a particular schedule. But I'm also in a fairly easy commuting area - most people do not have an option of walking and many areas of Virginia don't have easy bus service for commuters. Plus I can work for home which is also not an option for many.
The day I took the bus it was 15 minutes late in the morning and evening. And I noticed it was late on a day I didn't take it. Horrible? No. But I'm sure most people would figure that "if I'm standing idle for 15 minutes anyway I might as well be in the comfort of my own car stuck in traffic".
Driving slow on the highway? Not as bad as I thought - more about this in my upcoming diary.
In terms of absolute gasoline savings there isn't much to talk about, but in terms of cutting a percent of my normal usage I had reasonable success.
How about you?
As I said before, I hypermile the car, so I am consistently getting 5 to 7 miles more per gallon. It seems that I am reaching the limit with this strategy, so there isn't too much that I could improve on this.
The one area that I noticed that I could improve was cutting my driving trips. At the moment, I fill the car about once every week, after driving about 300 to 320 miles. So, even though I cannot get more significant gas efficiency, I can extend the rate at which I consume those 300+ miles.
The big change is bringing lunch to work. I work in a very suburban area, and going to lunch requires driving between 10 to 20 miles.
So, by bringing lunch, I can cut down on those trips, extending the gas tank for a little longer.
Over the weekend, we stayed at home and went to local events, saving a lot of gas that way. :)
More importantly, is that by keeping the challenge on, we can improve the chances that this kind of thinking will become a habit, and that is our main goal, isn't it?
1) Back in 1998, my wife and I made the conscious choice to spend a bit more money on housing in order to reduce our transportation expenses, our commute stress/time, and our carbon emissions. (By the way, the average cost of owning and operating a vehicle is about $500 per month, so if you only have to have 1 car instead of 2 cars, you've just bought yourself about $100,000 more house at current interest rates. Reducing from 3 cars to 1 car gets you an extra $200,000 in house. )
2) We own a Prius that averages around 40 miles per gallon. Theres's very little need to fill THAT thing up!
3) We take public transit frequently, as we live near two Metrorail stations.
4) We don't eat meat, which take large amounts of fuel and water to produce and transport.
The point is, I don't think there's a lot more room for my wife and I to cut our gasoline consumption, although there are little things that could possibly save us a few gallons here and there.
At the end of the year I'll know exactly how many gallons of gas I've bought and how much I've spent. It's kind of depressing.
Economic incentive to save gas, help the environment at zero financial cost :-)
And then, I drove four hours to visit my folks in NoVa last weekend. That was a bit of a pretty penny.
And then today, because I badly missed my mountain roads, I drove on some of the twistiest, hilliest roads I know in the area just because I wanted to drive on such roads!
So I think I have some catching up to do in the cutting back on gas department!!
Matusleo
Ut Prosim
2. You need someone that works/lives at the same location you do
3. Both you and the other someone have to sacrifice any extracurricular activities which depedneing on your age include happy hour taking your kids somewhere going out to dinner shopping picking up groceries etc...
4. To make matters even more complicated for the 95/395 corridor you need at least three people.
Mass transit if you are fortunate to both live near and work near a route actually works but carpooling from my experiecne almost always ends up falling apart do to any one of the previous factors.