Monday, May 30, 2011

May Gas, Traffic Lights

May 23:
243.6 miles / 11.515 gallons = 21.155 mpg

It's a solid improvement, but not as high as I would like. If you look at my previous spring/summer MPG posts, I was getting 21.9 to 22.75 mpg.

Most of my driving occurs at night, after I finish work. There are very few people in the grocery store when I shop, and a limited number of cars on the road. I take a route that is considerably flat, with only 2 minor hills.

Unfortunately, the town and city I travel between have switched some of the flashing yellow traffic lights to flashing red traffic lights (midnight-6 am). Instead of possibly being able to make it to the store with only 1 stop sign, I now could end up having to stop at 7 traffic lights (8 stops total, if you include the stop sign) in a one-way trip. I thought the point of traffic lights was to keep traffic moving along. Apparently, it's to increase stop-and-go driving to ruin my gas mileage.

In conclusion, towns and small cities need to switch back to the flashing yellow lights to move traffic along quicker, and so I can get the best gas mileage out of my caravan possible.

I feel like Pierre Bernard after this rant.

Caravan odometer = 176,662 miles