Altering driving route for economy

[Joenavy85]

even though you're trying for the best mileage possible, if you drive a longer distance it could negate any gains in mpg. if one way is 50 miles and i get 20 MPG (2.5 gallons used), and the other way if 30 miles and i only get 15 MPG (2 gallons used) it makes more sense to take the shorter route due to lower gas consumption, even though the mpg is lower

[SentraSE-R]

My answer to Jesse's question is, it depends. The 12 miles of high speed traffic with stoplights every two miles is more like city driving than highway driving. If he lets other traffic push him into rushing up to those lights and lose lots of kinetic energy, then a non-stop route will give better mpg. Typical mpg in a stoplight to stoplight drag race is <10 mpg. Starting from stops are some of the worst fuel economy conditions imaginable, with uphills coming in a distant second place.

If, OTOH, Jesse isn't intimidated by other traffic, keeps his speed down below freeway speeds, and coasts the last 1/3 mile to each light, he can use that as a nice P&G routine that can beat steady highway speed mpg.

When I lived a 13 mile round-trip from work, I bicycled. During my 34 year career, I only drove alone to work 3 of those years. The rest of the time, I bicycled, rode buses, motorcycled, carpooled, vanpooled, and rode trains and ferries.

[slowmover]

The tradeoff between the longer commute route and shorter ought to be explored in terms of total miles versus total fuel burn, yes, and it should also take into account wear & tear on the vehicle as this is also a large part of economy. A few miles OOR (out-of-route, to use a truck term) may be beneficial, overall, is how I see it. I'd happily go 10% farther to avoid stop-n-go (33 miles versus 30) if it meant that. In other words I'll take timely and smooth over the Puritan approach. Wear & tear on the driver also counts. Age, illness & injury grind away at energy available.

A given for me is that complete warm-up is the first priority. I work for the vehicle from that. A few miles extra is to the good. I count long vehicle life as more highly desirable than the last tenths of an annual mpg average. And anything less than 30-miles each direction means a vehicle not fully warmed up. Each mile is increasingly cheap to drive. I'll take a minimum of a 25 mph average speed over time, but prefer 30 mph (as calculated from engine hours versus miles).

Plus there is a deeper understanding to explore: I may wish to avoid "bad parts of town" (I think of Reginald Denny in this), and am also aware of infrastructure problems relevant to living in Tornado Alley, or of heavy flooding . . there are some places I'd rather not be to cite but three stronger examples out of a list of indirect routing influences.

My understanding of climate change is the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. A cascading set of problems therein.

In other words I should also have a "back through the woods" alternate set of routes to my home that have been explored. Do I want to avoid the windy ridges or the creek bottoms? If the power is out on the grid is there a way to avoid electrically-controlled signals? If the higways are shut what routes will others try to take? (Do I know what the dumb GPS boxes will tell other drivers to do?) I have a set of printed maps for the area I live in. No one of them is adequate. And do I regularly keep enough fuel on board to use them? Etc.

I have used counter-intuitive alternates in the past to avoid hairy traffic problems. Consigning the rarity of this sort of event to a back shelf is a mistake, IMO, as one may gladly fork over over the few hundred dollars in fuel saved (or more) to have not been in the wrong place at the wrong time but once. Single event severity.

To sum up, then, is to say that I have a lot of study ahead of me as I need a much wider & deeper grasp of the terrain -- the geography -- of to there, and back again versus a single set based on a singular criterion. My standard route should avail me of these alternates.

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