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I've worked 2rd shift for most of 18 years. Going in at 2:30PM traffic was light and coming home at 11:30 traffic was all but nonexistant. Driving normal a one way trip took about 25 minutes and hypermiling the trip took 30-40 minutes.

I just switched to graveyard. Going to work is great with very little traffic but getting off work at 7:30AM puts me smack in rush hour. It took me an hour and a half to get home this morning!!!! And I was not hypermiling! In fact my mileage is at 60mpg right now (following a tank in the eighties)! I HATE driving in traffic and I feel for all you that do it every day.

I'm hoping at least some of the problem was a heavy rain. The road I usually take was closed either because of the rain or because of a wreck. The 4 lane limited access "bypass" was a parking lot!

The good news is that I work weekends so only 3 of 5 working days have rush hour traffic.

Hi Lakedude:

___Welcome to what I equate to “95 miles through Chicago’s finest” on a daily basis ;) Hopefully the rain is what caused some of your traffic hit but 15 + mile stop and crawls are not that unusual in a dense urban environment with freeway/highway systems running through them depending on the time of day here in the Chicago area.

___When I am on the night shift (fortunately, only once every 6 weeks), I take a nap for an hour to an hour and a half before actually leaving work for home. There is just no way I am going to sit in a guaranteed 25 mile stop and crawl for 2 + hours when I can take a nap, and darn near catch up to where I would have been if I hadn’t plus miss some of the worst traffic in the country at that given time through that given stretch of roadway. Second item … DWB, DWB, and DWB some more with FAS’ing on any downhill and an even larger buffer to pulse up any climb where you can FAS down the backside once again … If you don’t, your FE is toast as it is a guarantee that even the best hypermiler in the best of automobiles other then maybe a PHEV-30 will see numbers down below the EPA in short order if he or she is not paying strict attention to anything the traffic pattern/jam will allow. I truly hope you just ran into a strange rain delay/traffic accident situation today but if it happens again, start pulling every tool in the tool box and at you will learn to survive. Another thing you might consider is an alternate route. Something akin to a country road that may add a few miles but if you can still maintain your normal 80 - 85 mpg on it vs. 50 or less if in the nightmare, you can travel another 35% distance on the same amount of fuel. Your time to home may not become that much longer if at all and what is the difference if it takes you 1.5 hours at 50 mpg while working your @$$ off for every last ounce of fuel or 1 + hour on an alternate while taking it a lot easier and beating your car up far less. Unfortunately, sometimes there are no alternates through the worst of it and as any Chicago driver will tell you, be on the look out for any off to on ramp, frontage road, subdivision with a clean route back to the freeway/tollway, or anything else you can possibly think of for maintaining your momentum when traveling in the stop and crawls. I wish I had better news but I still remember one afternoon 4 years ago when it took me 5.5 hours to get home with the occasional 3 + hour nightmares appearing about once a week due to weather, multi-car accidents, big-rig rollovers, highway construction, whatever … Hopefully you have a few good radio stations with traffic every 10 minutes and it may help you to decide if its sometime just better to give up, pull over and take the nap in the heat or continue on fighting a losing battle …

___I wish you the best of luck my friend and I hope I helped even if it’s just a little :(

___Good Luck

___Wayne

I HATE driving in traffic and I feel for all you that do it every day.

Hahhaahah feel what I feel buddy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! E V E R Y S I N G L E D A Y O F M Y D A M N D R I V I N G C A R E E R!

Now you know why I want that prius so badly :P

but 60 in stop and go.... i'm still jealous nevertheless :) good luck with how you plan to deal with the nasty rush! Well lucky I'm not to the point where I actually literally stop and go in 1st gear (that one time for a distance of only .5 miles... i went from 45 mpg to 31!!!! That's how bad our congested streets are when there is ONLY ONE WAY TO LEAVE THE CITY AND it all merges to one lane :S)

Good luck Lakedude!!!!!!

Thanks guys. I've driven in Chicago traffic and I'd go to great lenghts to avoid ever having to do it again.

60 is what the tank average is now. Out of 10 one way trips to and from work per week only 3 will be in weekday rush hour traffic. So far I've only driven one single weekday morning in rush hour and that single trip sunk the tank average down to 60. I'm guessing my average during the trip was around 25-30mpg. The AC had to be on a lot to keep the windows clear in the rain.

We will see how much difference the rain made this morning in a few hours.

Not much you can do if there is only one road out of town eh Phil?

I feel for ya man. Perhaps sometime soon you can get your old hours back?

I feel for ya man. Perhaps sometime soon you can get your old hours back?
I could go back right now if I wanted. The evening shift currently has a supervisor they call "Little Hitler". Now I get paid more money to deal with a lot less crap. The biggest drawback is the traffic on the way home during the week. Even that might not be so bad if it isn't raining.

Night shift is also kinda cool because if frees up your evenings.

hm tough call on the shifts really, well if you like change then well chagne is good for some. but to you if you think the cost of extra fuel will be worth it ;)

let me show you a map lakedude
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/342/maphomeyh8.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

the corner of 160 and 112 is where I live. Around my area they recently installed new big bumpers that forces you to slow down unless you want the biggest shock to your car's suspension (I have two to battle on a pure cold start) The other roads are starting to get them too and then sooner or later, every time I go to work I have to greet one of those suckers... and they force you to slow down as low as 30 km/h (20mph?) or else your going to hit your head on your car's roof hehe. I guess after hearing loud revy engines in the middle of the night this is the mayor's solution to stopping it and yes it has worked :O at the cost of FE :(

Ok see that crazy highway 1? The great Trans Canada Highway, oh yes living near the highway is the most convieient AND devestating way to my FE. When I need to get to Vancouver quick (NorthWest) I can hop on that highway and get easy high 55 mpg's, but when it get jams up oh it gets ugly... so ugly its stretches so far beyond this map! See where I live and go to work in Surrey requires me to go South of the map. And when I get morning shifts.. going home during rush hour is not pretty! People from Surrey want to go Vancouver so they go nuts and 152 going North and 104 going East becomes locked up during the hours of 3 pm till 7 pm every weekday and random weekend times! As well in conjunction to 160 from South going North gets super bad too and that has a nasty hill :( so smelling clutch is the last thing I need after looking at my mpg dropping like every X you get when your teacher decides to mark your test in front of you.

Bleh as you can see.... I have no choice but to go either 152 or 104 to 160 or go into 160 directly but either or I get the axe when it comes to a jam. There was this one time on 104 I tried to FAS the whole jam all the way down to 160 (since its a downhill) but I ended up pissing way too many people than the mpg I saved...actually I saved quite a bit of idling time but the crank and the 1st gear launches was wayyy too much for me. Like c'mon man I don't want any part of this ugly highway (boy i should take a pic!) but I have no choice but to feel what these commuters are feeling for every single day of their **** lives and honestly.... I don't know how they do it.

whoops i'm done my babble~

I don't know how people do it every day as well. It seems crazy.

Update, Good News!:

Today's newspaper came and I learned that my normal road was closed yesterday due to flooding. Today going home should be much, much better. We don't get rain like that very often so yesterday was the exception not the rule...:woot:

although forgot to mention this one time while battling up 152 north traffic, i left enough space in front of me so that i can judge my movements. Ironically a FEH was behind me was creeping right up at me so that drive me nuts that she was getting more mpg while mine was dropping. So then I decided to try out 1st and glide, since the space in front of me was merely like 2 car lengths away, i would pulse in first and then quickly shift into N and then time it so when I go into 1st again, the sync would be there and i can pulse a little and then N. At first I was going and going without touching the brakes at all and it was so easy to time, since the uphill helped me stopped my car ;) 5 mins later I finally got to the right of the loop where I turn left to 154 and then right to 112 home.

Its pretty crazy how it took me like 10 minutes to travel less than half of a km, man just a small amount of congestion can make the biggest difference.

A little gridlock/congestion goes a long way for sure.

Ok I made it home this morning on an alternate route in 40 minutes. The alternate route is horrible for mileage as it has much steeper hills than the normal route. We are talking 3rd gear hill climb with full assist and still losing mph. I've got another route picked out to try next time. It looks very promising. I can't wait to try it out.

We are talking 3rd gear hill climb with full assist and still losing mph
Arg! I have one of those too.....
I fould a wonderful alternative route for my now school traffic congested MPG road...except for a manditory stop sign right at the bottom of a steep, long hill.

Of course I don't know where 3rd gear ratio would be in my car but that hill burns off almost all the fuel saved. :(
Wayne suggested I investigate the neighborhoods to cheat that hill but I've been too lazy so far and just taking my usual road. Had good luck so far.

Shallow hills don't hurt mpg but long steep ones are a bugger. Since you are going for the big 1k it might be worth it to find a different route.

Update! Fantastic news! I found a route that is not too far out of the way and should save me traffic and be ok MPG wise. I'm still not going to be doing as good as before but at least we are looking in a similar ballpark. Perhaps no record tanks but no sub-EPA segments either.....

Totally worth the effort to go exploring. Check out Mapquest or any other map program or site.

Final update.

That new alternate route is awesome, much less hilly that the first alternate route. Traffic going straight is backed up for a mile but the right lane is mostly clear. I take a right and head out of town avoiding most of the backup.

Working second shift there was a small wind disadvantage. Now there is no wind problem but the temps are lower and traffic is much worse (at least on 3 mornings). Overall the situation is a little worse for hypermiling even with the fantastic new shortcut.

Got the tank up to the lifetime displayed average (65.8) and climbing. I expect to continue crushing EPA but those record tanks in the eighties might be a thing of the past.

That first day with the flooding and backed up traffic had me worried. Thank goodness it was a one day thing.