How To Hypermile in neighborhoods?
 

Hey everyone!

I drive mostly on the highway but occasionally I have to drive through neighborhoods to run errands or visit family.

They have speed limits about 20-30 MPH and many speed bumps and stop signs every 500 feet. It causes me to slow down and BRAKE (ugh). There's no other route I can take...believe me, I wish there was.

My area has many rolling elevations as well.



Can anyone offer any advice as how to get he best mileage in these situations??

Sometimes you just have a crappy stretch of your route, but generally there is a way to make it an advantage in some way. In this situation you are EXPECTED to gow slowly. That can be a hypermiler's dream. I have an area that reminds me of what you describe a little. I climb a steep hill from a stop, cross three speed bumps, and end with a downhill that I can't use for a free coast because of a left hand turn I have to make at a tough to see light at the bottom of the hill that is nearly always red. I go slowly. Sometimes i cross the speedbumps at there edges so I can get away with a couple extra mph. I park on that final hill, at a safe spot where I can see the light. When it's about to go green, I coast down, bump start, make my left. This is actually the better of two choices I have in my route at this stage.

If the speed bumps are properly engineered, you should be able to maintain the posted speed limit w/o the need for constant braking. Unfortunately this doesn't always hold true, so YMMV. Can't really pulse & glide with those nasty speed bumps around :(

Most drivers around here race up to speed bumps & then over brake to compensate. (this is when the skilled hypermiler catches back up with them & gets pissed cause it screws up their better thought out strategy) I still don't understand the mentality of most drivers who just drive soley with emotion & zero common sense.

Accelerate just enough to glide to your next obstacle. That's great stuff.

Pulse and N coast, 20 mph N coast is 66 mpg with my Cobalt, 30 = 100 mpg. Your probably about the same.

Don't stop at the stop signs? ;) J/k.

My commute to work has two stop signs 360 feet apart. From the first stop sign, I accelerate to 15 MPH, then EOC to the next stop sign. The important thing is the trip mileage. I average about 35 MPG on the ScanGauge for my three mile (each way) commute to work.

But officer, I swear I was at zero rpm at the stop line!

This neighborhood has rolling "hills" through the entire area.

There are 2 stop lights at each end of it so there's no getting around that. It also has 4 stop signs and 6 speed bumps.

THEN there's a gated community within that neighborhood that I have to drive into to get to my destination. There are 3 speed bumps and 3 stop signs with a speed limit of 20 MPH but this community is relatively flat.

That's a bit fast over speed bumps. I don't want to trash my suspension and undercarriage.