Some ideas to reduce the high cost of gasoline
Shock!
I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get “shocked” every time I go to fill up my car with gas. I have seen prices per gallon of regular gas here in the Los Angeles area as much as $2.69 9/10 lately. And it seems like just a few weeks ago, they were around $2.25 9/10. Mathematically speaking, that’s a 19.5% increase in a matter of weeks.
What is really insidious is that a significant increase in gasoline prices has a tremendous ripple effect throughout the economy. Increases the cost of doing business. When those costs are high enough, they are passed on to you and me in the form of higher prices. So this isn’t just about improving the environment, it’s about economic survival!
We must all take positive action
I think we drive prices down if we take collective action to reduce gasoline consumption. If we can reduce our national demand for gasoline, this certainly should eventually lead to stabilization and possibly a lowering of the price we pay at the pump. And that will help stabilize prices throughout the economy. One of the big side benefits of this is that reducing our gas consumption will also improve the environment, especially air quality.
Some suggestions
Here are some suggestions. Some are things you can do to immediately reduce your gas mileage/cost. Some require cooperation with others. The cumulative effect of all these changes can be significant if everyone saves even a little:
1) Make sure you carpool at least once or twice a week. Every person who shares a car is one less person on the road.
2) Make an agreement with your employer to change your work hours to hours when traffic is better. For example, if you arrive at work a couple of hours in the morning and leave a couple hours early, you may be on the road when traffic is lighter. That should translate into higher gas mileage.
3) Make an agreement with your employer to work 10 hours a day, 4 days a week. Employers still get the same number of work hours, but this reduces the number of days you have to come to work. Days off can vary by employee so you don’t disrupt business operations.
4) Employers should consider allowing some employees to work remotely. With high-speed Internet connections and VPN accounts, this is now more technically possible than ever. As long as the employee is self-motivated, this benefits both the employer and the employee. Many times, employees who telecommute actually work longer on telecommuting days due to reduced travel time. In addition, they usually eat at home during the working day, reducing lunch times. And there are fewer interruptions so they can focus and be more productive. And the employee has less stress by reducing sick time and increasing morale.
5) Change one of your work days to Saturday or Sunday. In most cases, traffic is lighter on the weekends, so you should get better gas mileage. And it’s not great to have a day off during the week to take care of personal things that are sometimes difficult to do on the weekends.
6) Consolidate your trips. While lowering mpg is important, the real savings come when you simply don’t use the car.
7) Set a personal goal to reduce your personal gas mileage by 10%. I recommend that you write this goal on a card and tape it to the sun visor of your car so you will see it regularly. If you set a goal and review it often, you’re more likely to take conscious steps to achieve it. Too often, we just get in the car and drive off without thinking about the consequences.
8) Get a log book and start recording your gas mileage every time you go to refuel. Write down the mileage, number of gallons, price per gallon, total cost, and your average miles per gallon. Then review the total figures at the end of each month. Once you get into the habit of writing down the information, it won’t take long. Simply recording this information will let you know how much or how little you are using your car. This will make it easier for you to take steps to reduce your consumption.
9) Next time you change your oil, ask for synthetic oil. Yes, synthetic oil is more expensive. But, when I switched to synthetic oil a few years ago, my mileage improved by 25%. That was in a different car than the one I drive now. I don’t know if it will experience any changes, but I bet it will get some improvement.
10) Take your car to a mechanic to find out what steps you can take to improve gas mileage. Maybe it’s as simple as tuning. Or a new air filter. Or air in your tires. Maybe using a fuel additive. The point is that if everyone takes steps to improve their mileage, it could have a huge collective impact.
11) Reward the gas stations with the best prices with your business. It’s not that hard to find lower gas prices relative to other stations. If you have a warehouse club like Costco in your area, they usually have great prices. I estimate that I save at least $0.15 per gallon buying gas at my local Costco.
12) Shop online for the lowest gas prices in your area. There are a few websites that post local gas prices across the country. If your area is covered, this can be a quick way to locate the best prices. One such site is called http://www.gasbuddy.com. What is really amazing is how the price can vary by up to 20% in just a few blocks.
13) Slow down on the freeway. Did you know that most cars get their best gas mileage between 40 and 60 miles per hour? Those people who are flying down the highway at 70-80 miles per hour are needlessly consuming more gasoline in addition to putting people’s lives at risk. I used to be in favor of raising the legal speed limit to 65 miles per hour or higher. But knowing the savings we can all achieve if we just lower the average speed limit, I think it’s time we got back to 55 miles per hour. I know it’s probably going to be a very unpopular suggestion, but I think it’s important to do it anyway.
14) Do not leave your car running to warm up or for any other reason. Most of today’s cars heat up quickly, so there’s probably no reason to waste gas this way anymore.
15) When starting at a traffic light or stop sign, accelerate gradually. When you accelerate suddenly, you consume more gasoline.
16) Government officials should review the increased daylight savings time. Studies have shown that overall energy drops when daylight saving time begins. This is probably because less energy is used at night, since we have an extra hour of light. What would happen if we moved the clocks forward half an hour or an hour more? I have noticed that when I get up in the morning, it starts to get light around 6:30 here in Los Angeles. I would imagine there would be little negative benefit if we moved our clocks forward and an extra half hour or hour to make the most of daylight. I think this would only work if it was carried out across the country. We should also be looking to advance the clocks to early March instead of waiting until April. If you think this is unreasonable, remember that Daylight Saving Time started at the end of April until the US Congress changed it by law.
17) Large corporations should consider setting up small satellite workplaces closer to where people live. Even having small offices in different places where people can go and connecting their laptop to a high-speed Internet connection can make it easier for some knowledge workers to reduce travel distances. The government should offer tax incentives to encourage this.
18) Write to your local, state and national leaders and encourage them to show true leadership on conservation. It is very easy to email the leaders, I suggest you email them with these and/or your own suggestions. It amazes me that prices can rise so dramatically with so little notice from our public and private leaders. We need to let them know that we expect them to show a higher standard of leadership. A large number of these suggestions imply a significant change in the way we live and work. Many of these changes will not happen unless they are suggested and publicized by leaders at the national level.
It’s time to change our habits, it’s probably past time
These changes will only change if there is a change in our national mentality, our national habits. We have been conditioned to believe that we have to work the hours that we work. We have been conditioned to believe that the only effective way to work is to travel to a central location. That we have to be physically at the Corporate location to be productive.
Government leaders should offer tax incentives to companies to implement policies that encourage conservation and reduce distances and travel times. They already do this to some degree with carpooling, but that’s not enough. We just need to be more creative in finding ways to be more efficient and reduce gas mileage. Reduce demand and prices are likely to follow.
There are other suggestions you could make, such as using public transportation or buying a car that uses less fuel. Those should be looked for, but those are the standard answers and longer term solutions. We certainly need to move in that direction for the long term, but given the recent dramatic increase in gasoline prices, by necessity we must take immediate action that will lead to lower prices in the short term, while moving toward long-term solutions. .
I know some of these suggestions are radical. I know that many require the consent of people in authority over us, mostly our employers. And some require a certain amount of self-sacrifice (but not that much really if you change a few simple habits). The good news is that given the high cost of gasoline, taking even a few of these actions can significantly lower your monthly expenses. And the truth is that if we want gasoline prices to drop, we each have to do our part.
If we all do a little, together we can achieve a lot!
Please share this article with as many people as possible. The more people believe that we can take meaningful steps to reduce gasoline consumption, the greater the chance that prices will fall. Wouldn’t it be great if our class actions brought gas prices down to $1.20 a gallon! Those days are gone forever, if we believe they are gone. How would lowering fuel prices improve your economy? How would this improve our national economy?
