How to Drive Less

My younger daughter just passed her driving test. I let her take the car to a babysitting job the other day and biked the 2 miles to my office. Why haven't I done this much until now? Because I wasn't forced to.

The United States has the world's best road system and close to its worst public transit system, Columbia University historian Kenneth T. Jackson has written. So it's a challenge to get away from our infrastructure. Plus, it's easy to be lazy--I know.

If work or school is more than a few miles from home, getting there without a car and without a public transit system demands a sacrifice many people won't or can't make. But we can begin to examine the number of unnecessary trips we make in our cars. Today in most places it's just so easy to jump into the car and go 20 miles to a store we like instead of a half mile to one we don't like.

For the summer, one reachable goal for many of us would be to eliminate one car trip per week. For one day, carpool to work with someone who lives near you. Bike or walk to work for just one day a week. Consolidate two or three errands in a shopping area you like to use and do all of those things on the same day. Let's say you cut out driving 40 miles by eliminating one car trip (many people commute 20 or more miles one way to work). Over a year, cutting back 40 miles of driving per week, this saves 2,080 miles of driving. In a car that goes 25 miles on a gallon of gas, that would save more than 83 gallons of gas. It's a powerful way to cut back on petroleum.