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I'm so sick of dealing with rush-hour highway traffic, I think I'm just not going to do it any more. Not only do minor variations in the pattern cause huge hits to FE, but the increasing level of insanity is making me downright scared. Yesterday I came within a few inches of being hit from behind at 45mph+ differential after getting stopped by traffic in the right lane. Some idiot was coming down an onramp just behind me and decided he wanted to dart across my lane to get around us, but was looking behind him instead of in front and only just swerved around my bumper at the last second. I guess you could call that "the last straw."

So I spent some time looking for a less populated, prefferably shorter, ideally more FE route to work. The first thing I did was go to Google Maps and print out a map of the area between my apartment and the office. Then I drew a line between those two points, which represents the route "as the crow flies." Finally, I did my best to trace the roads that come closest to following that line. The result is pretty astounding IMO. After measuring in Google Earth, I found out that my usual route is 24.25 miles in the morning, 27.11 miles in the afternoon, for a total of 51.36mi/day. The first cut of the new route is 18.92 miles, which would be only 37.84mi/day. That's better than a 16% reduction in miles travelled!

Better yet, there's practically no way not to end up saving a bunch of fuel. With the current route and a daily average of 40.5mpg round trip, I burn 1.27gal/day on average. To use that much fuel on the new route I would have to get 29.8mpg :eek: . I have yet to try it, but I think it's a very safe bet that it won't be that bad! We're talking 30-45mph secondary road through farm country for roughly half of that mileage, which can be hypermiling gold. More lights and turns are the wild card.

As with everything else, we'll have to see what happens. I may take a hit in the net FE department, but for the fuel savings it's worth it. (I could save 1.35gal/week if I only hit 37.8mpg, or one gallon used per day. That's $198/year at $3/gal.) If I can maintain or improve upon my current 40+mpg run it will be considered a nice bonus.

I'll try to post maps tonight.

Nice find. I hope it works out for you. It is kind of interesting that most of us take the same route all the time and never look at optimizing it.

I think our tendancy is to stay on the major roads. When wayne found out he could take a frontage road instead of highway to warm up it did wonders.

Yup. I think the reason I haven't looked for a new route in the two months since moving is that this one isn't obvious. It will make more sense when I show it on a map, but basically I need to go ESE from my office to my apartment. Since the first thing I hit is a north-south highway, the logical thing to do seems to be going south. But once you do that and start following highways it's very round-about. It turns out that the right thing to do is go north and cross the Connecticut River at the other bridge, then start moving southeast from there. What's really interesting is that it even works from the other office, which is only 19 miles morning/21 miles afternoon taking the normal highway route. But heading north and snaking through the back roads brings that down to 16.9miles. There's no way you'll see that without breaking out the maps and actually measuring it. Lesson learned: what seems obvious isn't always right.

I can't wait to try it out this afternoon to see what kind of numbers I get!

Hi Tim:

___That is excellent news! With any new route, there will be the new learning curve as to when to FAS, P&G, HS P&G, DWL, DWB, etc. but I can bet you will be right back up to your old ways of excellent FE in just a few days if not sooner. Congrats in either case as you will not only save $’s but wear and tear by accumulated miles too!

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Preliminary results are in: not bad!

18.6mi, 31mph average, 63mph max, 36.0mpg
Net elevation change: +353ft
Road Types: 65mph highway, 35mph limit rural roads, and some 25-30mph limit city streets
Terrain: Gentle, rolling hills except for the last mile (if headed home) which is a steep ascent.
Advantages: Very little traffic once off the freeway, 35mph roads are perfect for 5th gear DWL @ 45-65mpg consumption rates, dramatically shorter, and I get home at the same time despite the lower speeds.
Disadvantages: A bazillion stop signs and turns! I also found one of the most convoluted intsersections in existence: a 5-way (or was it 6?) stop. I'll work with it for a week or so but I might end up tweaking it to reduce the number of stops if possible.

Overall I'm rather impressed. To get 36.0mpg on the first time through, not knowing when to FAS or at least coast, and having to turn around once to backtrack ain't half bad, expecially considering the elevation change. This could make for some killer FE on the down-hill inbound trip. Again, it's all about learning to manage all of those stop signs. I think that the 1 gallon per day goal is easily attainable, and the 40mpg+ goal should also be possible with some work. Who knows, maybe even more?

For your map viewing enjoyment:

The old route,almost entirely highway (shorter morning route shown, afternoon was longer to avoid persistent traffic):
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/Old_ROute_morning_.JPG

The new route, which takes advantage of a more direct path via country back roads:
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/New_Route.JPG

It boggles the mind that I ever took the first route when you look at these images side by side.

The first trial in the AM direction netted me 40.0mpg. So...many...stop...signs! I tried to FAS twice but timed it all wrong. A really aggressive approach to this thing would probably involve a FAS every two miles on average. After seeing this thing I want to set a preliminary warm weather FE goal: 45mpg morning, 39mpg afternoon (41.8mpg combined, 0.905gal/day).

I'll report my normal progress in the Daily Grind, any development of the route itself here. Wish me luck, 'cause I'm gonna need it!

Tim this should still turn out to be an amazing improvement. I love seeing the 2 different maps and went and checked the same thing for my route. Unfortunately mine seems already very direct but I'm looking for anything that might avoid some of the uphill parts. Good luck and keep trying. If you can get close to your original 40mpg but traveling fewer miles you're way ahead of the game.

I've mapped out a tweak to the route that ought to be a big help in the afternoon, and might or might not work in reverse. On the way home, my current route puts me on a 30mph road for a quarter mile, then a 45mph road up a slight hill for about a half mile, and then dumps me onto a 65mph highway. I don't get off to a very good start this way.

My alternative is to go the other way and parallel the highway on a 30mph road. Thing is, this is a really nice road! After I climb ~30ft and turn left, it's all down hill for a mile and a half. With the right entry speed, that could be one long FAS. At the bottom of the hill I run out of road and have to get onto the highway as usual. So I could gain a 1.5 mile FAS, but the hitch is that it adds 3/4 of a mile to the total route distance. According to my hand calc this could save 3oz of fuel. :Banane33: (Hey, what if everybody saved 3oz/day?) This could also push the segment into the low 40s mpg. I'll let you know how it goes!

It's great that you can play with your route like that.

Here in Chicagoland, I'm content in knowing that any alternate route I cleverly devise is already over-driven by the other 10,000 people who thought of it before I did.

Looks like it works! I did get my 1.5mi FAS as planned, (just barely...got down to 25mph at one point but nobody was behind), and best-ever FE of 40.9mpg (previous best: 39.3mpg). That puts me at 42.7mpg for the day, which is also the best yet.

The only catch was an encounter with Captain Testosterone, which was probably the worst road rage experience I've had yet. Long story short it wasn't really even hypermiling related, this guy was just out to make somebody's life miserable. (It worked...that stuff really rattles me.)

Either way I think we have a keeper!

Here's where my madness has led me:

This morning I hit a 47.7mpg segment on the way in. The ScanGauge was reading 52.x as I exited the back road section but then I severely knocked it down as soon as I entered the ~6 mile highway portion. Aero drag sucks :(. But that got me thinking, why use the highway at all? Enter the map (again). After three or four minutes of playing I found a way to replace 5.7mi of highway with 6.9mi of back roads. A quick calc tells me that I break even on net fuel used if I can bring that 47.7mpg up to 50.7mpg, which doesn't seem too ridiculous as long as there aren't any nasty surprises along the back-road alternative. It's a gamble because I'm shooting for the lowest number of gallons, but has the potential to pay off in a huge way. I'm going to try it at least once to see what's there.

The other alternative is to find some way to make the highway section better, which I've done to some degree but I'll re-visit if I'm only breaking even on fuel or worse.