woozyspace

I wake up every weekday morning at 5:30 so I can get ready to ride my bike 14 miles into work. Some mornings when it is cold and dark out I can't help wondering if it is really worth it. I haven't seen the weight loss that I had hoped for and getting up earlier takes away from the precious little sleep that I do manage to get.

This morning when I was riding into work I couldn't help but notice all of the cars, each one sitting in traffic, most of them with just one person in it. I thought that its amazing that we allow our government to kill innocent people so we can have this lifestyle that comes from cheap gas & oil. Since I moved to N.C. I've done more than my share of sitting in traffic alone in my truck burning up the gas. So I'm no better than anyone else when it comes to this, but being on a bicycle in the midst of it this morning definately shed a different light on the situation.

I don't expect people to change overnight and for the most part I don't expect the majority of people to change at all. But when it comes to change I'm a big fan of baby steps. Through small steps the hardest tasks become possible (more or less). While I was looking at all these cars the thought came to me; what if everyone made an effort to carpool just once a week or maybe just once a month? What would the impact of that be on our gas and oil consumption?

I started doing some simple math in my head as to what I save by carpooling and biking to work. I bike 4 - 5 days a week so for the sake of this equation I'll round down to 4 days a week. The roundtrip from my house to work is approx. 40 miles ( I bike part of this and carpool the rest ). So 40 miles * 4 days = 160 miles. I'll assume that this happens roughly 50 weeks a year ( NC is great for year round biking ) so we're talking about 8000 miles a year. My 2003 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab 4 x 4 gets about 16 miles to the gallon around town. It probably gets a bit less but I'll use 16 mpg for this. So 8000 / 16 = 500 gallons of gas per year. At a cost of 2.31 / gallon of regular ( current gas price at Costco ) I save $1155.00 per year in gas. Add to this the savings in servicing ( at least two extra servicings per year ) and the savings in pollution generated ( 6 lbs CO2 / gallon = 3000 lbs ) and I have a pretty good reason to get up at 5:30 tomorrow before the sun has even thought about coming up and get myself ready to get on that bicycle again.


* I came across this on the EPA web site and thought it made an interesting footnote to this entry:

What Has Emission Control Meant for Air Quality?

Efforts by government and industry since 1970 have greatly reduced typical vehicle emissions. In those same years, however, the number of miles we drive has more than doubled. The increase in travel has offset much of the emission control progress.

The net result is a modest reduction in each automotive pollutant except lead, for which aggregate emissions have dropped by more than 95 percent.

With ozone continuing to present a persistent urban air pollution problem, future vehicle emission control programs will emphasize hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide reductions. Carbon monoxide control will remain critical in many cities, and limits on vehicle-generated carbon dioxide may become important in the future.