May 28th, 2008
The 5% Plan: My Baseline Gasoline Use
As you may remember from my post earlier this month about my goal of cutting gasoline use by 5%, I needed to get a baseline for my gasoline use. I took the week of May 18, 2008 through May 24, 2008 to try to get an estimate of how much driving I did.
I kept pretty careful track of my milage as well as my destinations for that first week. I had a couple of atypical trips in addition to my usual driving (a party halfway across the island and dropping my mom off at the airport) so I subtracted some milage or it would be just way too easy to knock 5% off. After all of these allowances, I am setting my baseline gas use for a week at:
10.5 gallons per week.
That’s 261.3 miles of driving at 24.82 miles per gallon.
My goal, then, for this week, is to be at or below 9.98 gallons. Assuming my mileage stays the same, that’s 247.7 miles of driving. Already this week I took my bike to the temple for Sunday service, saving a couple of miles.
Other possibilities include not driving at all on one weekend day (which will hamper my productivity a bit, unless I can find somewhere to take my notebook on my bike so I can do some work–I’m investigating those possibilities) and taking a different route to work in the morning with even less than the little traffic I currently encounter.
Yes, it’s only a bit over half a gallon a week, but it’s a start. Let’s see where this takes me!
only 5%, I think you can do much better than that. To carry your notebook, just use a backpack. Good luck. I think you could get that 5% just by driving more efficiently.
Honestly, there’s no way that just driving more efficiently (unless you count alternative routes) would get me 5%, since I’m already not a speeder, not a guy who idles at a stoplight, and keep the truck in very decent shape with inflated tires at all times. However, I do also think I can do better than 5%, but with much more substantial changes.
[...] Posted in June 7th, 2008 by admin in Budgeting, Frugality, Goals Many of you will recall that I spent last week trying to reduce my baseline gasoline use from 10.5 gallons to 9.98 gallons. I calculated for that to be the case I’d need to drive 247.7 miles or less and maintain my [...]
[...] Posted in June 7th, 2008 by admin in Budgeting, Frugality, Goals Many of you will recall that I spent last week trying to reduce my baseline gasoline use from 10.5 gallons to 9.98 gallons. I calculated for that to be the case I’d need to drive 247.7 miles or less and maintain my [...]