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Other ways to save on gas. What do you do?
There is more than one way to skin a cat... is that how the saying goes?
Anyway, yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine who is convinced that the worldwide oil will be gone in 30 years. While I'm not as pessimistic as he is, I think it could eventually happen in the next 100 years or so.
That's beside the point. We started talking about Urban Sprawl, communiting using light rail, public transportation, etc. We also talked about other things we can do to not use gasoline.
here in Salt Lake City they are planning on widening the freeway 6 lanes on each side to accomodate for future traffic. I sent the council an email expressing that wider roads will only lead to MORE urban sprawl, which will just make this a problem that needs to be fixed some day again in the future. The problem appears to be cyclical. The solution in this case is a tram or light-rail train system from Provo to Salt Lake City (where many people commute from).
Back to the point. We began discussing many things that we do in order to save on gasoline, conserve energy, etc.
At our home we do the following:
1) I work at home and rarely drive. We can survive on one car even though we have two. We drive her car most of the time and I work on my car for the coming day when it's a fuel efficient beast.
2) We live within 4 miles of her work. We live close enough to my wife's work that she can (and often does) ride her bike to work on a regular basis. This summer we noted that days went by without either of us using a car.
3) We ride our bikes to get groceries. If our destination is within a few miles, we try to ride our bikes. Not only are cars the most inefficient when you make short trips, exercise is good for you. I consider exercise as being the poor man's weight reduction for my car.
Even when she does drive to work, she drives her CRX which gets 35mpg when driven conservatively. Considering how close she is to work, I imagine she only gets around 27mpg as the car doesn't have time to properly warm up. Driving is a necessity during the winter and other times when there is a lot of snow/ice on the ground.
Future plans include building an electric car for short trips (within a few miles). If I can build an electric car next year she will be able to travel to work and back each day for pennies in electric costs. She will also be able to recharge at work. I'm hoping to find a cheap Honda Civic Hatchback for this project between the years of 1989-1991.
Anyway, what do YOU do to save gas besides modify your car and hit refresh on this site religiously hoping for updates?
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