Price-per-Gallon Versus Dollars-per-Pound

I’ve been thinking about the fact that I haven’t been writing a lot lately.  I have a reminder note to post something each week, but each time it came to writing, the little bit I’d put together was followed by ‘close document’ and when asked ’save file?’ the answer was ‘no’.

Today I was thinking about gas prices.  I’m of the opinion that gas prices aren’t necessarily “high” these days, they were just extraordinarily “low” before.  We buy gas by the gallon, but I’m a big advocate of thinking of it as “cents per mile”, as in what does it cost you to travel a certain distance?  And if gas prices go up 10, 20, or 50 cents, what was the change in the cost of a trip?  In my case, I’m at about 20 cents a mile right now.  That means I spend under $6.50 round-trip to work these days.  I make considerably more than that during the day’s work, so making the trip is worthwhile.  If I took a bus it would cost me about $4 and take twice as long, so the paying the extra $2.50 to save time at the beginning and end of each work day is worth it to me.

Thinking about gas in terms of price-per-gallon is probably about as meaningful as thinking of a grocery bill as dollars-per-pound.  Sure, you can figure it out that way, but what does it really tell you?  At the end of the day you still have to eat, and if you can afford to feed yourself and feel OK about the food, you probably are not going to grumble about a change in the price of your dinner.  Likewise, while you may talk about gas prices being an annoyance, you probably aren’t going to do much about it.  What you can do is figure out what the price of a trip is and then decide if you want to go.

Consolidate a couple errands into one trip rather than two or three and you could save more money than clipping coupons and without the risk of paper cuts.  Do both and you may come out better off than before gas hit $4 a gallon.  It seems we could all get smarter about where we go, when we go, and why we go rather than complaining about the cost of the trip.

Not on a bus.

In a bit of a twist, this entry is about where Adam’s iPod is not, it is not on a bus. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if it was possible to take a bus to work. My commute is about 16 miles one way, but like a lot of people it is from one suburb to another. Buses in my metro area tend to go from suburb to the center of the city. Those of us that have more lateral commutes, suburb to suburb, tend to be out of luck if we want to ride a bus. I don’t really want to; I just wanted to know if it was possible.

Let me first clarify that I have nothing against buses. Oh sure, like most drivers I’d prefer not to drive behind one. But aside from that they’re fine; I even rode them about a fourth of the time (five times a month on days I just didn’t feel like driving) when I worked in the center of the city. Aside from commuting to the middle of the city for people sick of traffic and crazy expensive parking, buses do tend to be a mode of transportation that most people use because they don’t have a better option. In these days of increasing fuel costs they also tend to be marketed as an option that conservation-minded and congestion-annoyed people should consider. So I considered them.

I noticed a bus each day going home, so I knew the route number that went near work. I’ve also seen the buses in my home suburb, so I knew the route number there too. Plugging these into the local metro transit website I came up with a commute that was shocking. I’d have to leave home before I usually wake up and the commute, about 40 minutes in a car (including a stop for coffee) would take over an hour and a half by bus, involve one transfer, and still require about a 10 to 15 minute walk at each end of the commute. The cost would be $4 round trip by bus, versus about $5.76 that I pay for gas (based on the .18 per mile my car costs to drive with gas at about 3.25 a gallon). So I’d save about $1.75 per day and loose over an hour and a half of my day to the commute, not counting walking and waiting time. Even if gas cost $5 per gallon, the savings of riding the bus is less than the cost of that cup of coffee I stop for. Given the route the bus takes, it would also travel much farther than my direct commute. Given a diesel bus I’d hope it gets better mileage than my gasoline powered ride, but factor in pollution differences and I’d call the ecological impact a wash. There are very few people who would choose this trade off.

In my musings on energy saving I also checked into what a scooter would do for me. I was impressed with how many people I saw using them to zip around Rome, at a time when gas there was over $5 a gallon (conversion rate applied) and there didn’t appear to be any place to park. They look like fun too. The smallest models (50cc engine, legally a moped in my state) cost $1,800 here and get about 95 miles per gallon. But those small models also have a top speed of 30 miles per hour (doubtful given my observations, maybe downhill with a tailwind). But doing a suburb to suburb commute would require some segment of highway driving in my neck of the woods and a 30 MPH top speed isn’t going to cut it (or even be legal if connecting to an Interstate). Larger models that can attain safe highway speeds cost over $6,000 and require a motorcycle license. No problem, except for in the rain and winter. Clearly this is an occasional solution at best.

So put a door and roof on that bigger scooter, add two more tires and you have a Smart Car. I saw these zipping around Rome too and they look like a lot of fun as well. If the US website is to be believed, the cars sell for $15,000 and get 35 MPG city mileage. Disappointing. My car gets about 18 MPG in traffic, with the air conditioning turned on. That means I’d save about 7 cents per mile in a smart car, and it would take over 200,000 miles for me to recoup my investment in the car at those rates. Put another way, that works out to 17 years of commuting to work if I worked 7 days per week. I don’t.

I guess I should feel good about all this. Clearly I’m doing about the best I can in terms of balancing energy efficiency, time, and money. I suspect there are a lot of us, and those are probably the folks I see on the road every day, doing exactly what I’m doing, driving to work.