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Welcome to the EcoAdvice blog
18 December 2011
In the run up to Christmas I’ve been thinking about how much travel people do over
Christmas visiting relatives, and how we all tend to travel on the motorway whenever
possible; this got me pondering my daily commute into work. I have a long commute
to work everyday, typically around an hour. I know it’s not very environmentally
friendly driving to work but there aren’t practical train links from where I live,
however, I do have the most economical car I can afford, it’s a fairly new 1.4l petrol
engine car. There are three different routes I can take into work, one has no motorway,
one is about a third motorway, and one nearly all motorway; but the extra motorway
makes each route approximately 5 miles longer the others. Interested in the economies
of steady motorway driving, compared to the start/stop at all those traffic lights
on the A-
The longest motorway route had the worst fuel consumption, being 43.7mpg, the reduced middle distance motorway route was 47.1mpg and the shortest non motorway route was 48.5mpg. It was clear that the extra distance was not offset in any way by better mileage, and the more motorway the worse the fuel economy, however, one other factor comes in to play, the time taken. Both motorway routes took on average 60 minutes, so the longer route is now definitely out, costing £559 extra per year, but saving no time at all; the shortest route took 10 minutes longer, although saved a further £358 per year. Now as green as I like to be, I also value my time with my family, so I need to consider whether the £358 cost saving is worth the 77 hours lost time with my family over the year….probably not.
It is useful to analyse different routes if you are a regular driver, and it was easy for me as I had a trip meter in the car that gave average mileage that I could reset for each journey. If you don’t have one, then driving the same route for a few days from a full tank, noting the mileage, and seeing how much fuel it takes to fill up again, will provide the same information.
Alternatively, and probably easiest, Google maps will give you a rough idea on the fuel cost for any journey you input. I’m not sure how accurate it is, as for me it estimated at £3 more than the real cost for each of the routes, but it should give a rough comparison.
10 July 2011
Launched a Facebook page for Eco Advice to allow quick upload of news and information.
© 2011 Raphael Edwards AIEMA