Sunday, September 28, 2008

13th Week Statistics

Dates: September 19 – 25

Here are the statistics for the week:

  • Gas in Olympia, WA this week: $3.76 per gallon
  • Total distance for each mode of car-free transportation
    • Walking: 13.64 miles
    • Bicycle: 9.73 miles
    • Bus: 5.01 miles
  • Total car-free miles: 28.38
  • Gallons of gas saved: 1.14
  • Gas expense saved: 4.27
  • Total transit fares: $6.00
  • Total miles driven: 20.1
  • Gallons of gas used: 0.804
  • Cost of gas used: $3.02

Well, when you take out the daily commute, the numbers change a bit. There’s a lot less distance by bike when I cut out the 4-mile daily round trip. Sunday we needed to get out, and headed to the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, there is no bus service into the delta (hint, hint, Intercity Transit!), so out came the car.

Mark

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

A Note from the Chief Errand Runner

Since this project began I have often had to remind myself of the pictures I've seen of stout little old ladies in neat black widow's dress hauling their daily groceries up the steep alleys and staircases of Italy.  It puts things into perspective when you're a 30-something woman with very little hill to traverse.  When I found myself starting to mumble about feeling like a pack horse while carrying bags and baskets of groceries to and from my home, those images of strong Italian matrons stopped my complaining and served me a piece of humble pie.  I realized how spoiled we really are in this society with everyone having cars that go anywhere and everywhere.  Then I think of how many women in this culture would not be able to continue running such daily errands on foot into the latter years of their lives.  They may not have remained in good enough condition, partly because of their reliance on those very cars.  So I hope to change that pattern, at least in my own life, and perhaps be an inspiration to others.  I won't just benefit from the physical exercise but also from the near daily interaction with local business people in my community who perhaps might just need a little inspiration themselves.  

12th Week Statistics

Dates: September 12 – 18

Here are the statistics for the week:

  • Gas in Olympia, WA this week: $3.79 per gallon
  • Total distance for each mode of car-free transportation
    • Walking: 8.51 miles
    • Bicycle: 21.07 miles
    • Bus: 0.82 miles
  • Total car-free miles: 30.4
  • Gallons of gas saved: 1.22
  • Gas expense saved: $4.61
  • Total transit fares: $0.00
  • Total miles driven: 11.03
  • Gallons of gas used: .44
  • Cost of gas used: $1.67

What a week! This week included the blow of losing my job, and the car was used to bring my personal things home from the office. We combined that with a trip out to pick produce from a garden we were asked to look after (it turns out we would have had quite a lot to try to bring home by bike) and a trip to get the cats’ food from Mud Bay on the Westside.

Mark

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

How Green is Cycling?

I did a Google search on “how green is my commute” and came up with this article on Bicycle Fixation. It is an interesting read and something to think about.

We often here people talk about how green they are. Perhaps they chose a high efficiency vehicle (or a hybrid). Maybe they hypermile. Maybe they compost and recycle and reuse as much as possible. All these are good things, and can help the environment. But is riding a bike green? In and of it self, the author says no. I go both ways on this, but mostly disagree with the author’s assertion.

Hear me out.

In as much as riding a bike replaces a car trip, I don’t think anyone would disagree that it is green. Use the bike for your exercise? Again I’d say it is. What’s your alternative? Drive to the gym for an hour staring at the television while you work out on the stair master? Drive to the pool to swim? Granted, again the bike is reducing car trips, so it meets the “green standard” applied by the author.

Let’s look at something the author addresses that’s close to my heart: bike touring.

I like bike touring. OK, I’ve not done a real tour since high school, but I’d like to get back to it and enjoy some tours in the future. Most of us like to take a tour someplace we’ve not seen, or is just so incredibly wonderful we want to go back at a slower pace. I had the opportunity to pedal through the Loire Valley in France, Bavaria, Czechoslovakia, northern Germany and the Netherlands one summer. Of course, we had to fly from Seattle to Europe and then take trains to the starting points for the various legs of the journey. We know that flying uses huge amounts of fossil fuels, and trains use significant amounts as well. But let’s look at the time spent cycling. Each leg covered several hundred miles, by bicycle. These are sections that would likely have been traveled by car or bus otherwise. So, in that sense each leg we rode, we omitted a car trip.

If my wife and I decide to tour the Oregon coast by bicycle, we could do so one of two ways. We could lengthen the trip significantly by starting and ending from our home (which is the only way the author of the article considers the trip to be green), or we could find transport to our selected starting point, then ride our tour, and get transport back. Maybe not 100% green, but every choice we make that will reduce car trips (and along many routes we may choose to ride, there are lots of cars) is a green choice. It doesn’t matter if the “green portion” is bracketed by less green options. We have to make the choices that make sense to us.

What do you think? Please leave us your comments.

Mark

Monday, September 15, 2008

11th Week Statistics

Dates: September 5 - 11

Here are the statistics for the week:

  • Gas in Olympia, WA this week: $ 3.84 per gallon
  • Total distance for each mode of car-free transportation
    • Walking: 1.74 miles
    • Bicycle: 41.39 miles
    • Bus: .65 miles
  • Total car-free miles: 43.78
  • Gallons of gas saved: 1.75
  • Gas expense saved: 6.72
  • Total transit fares: $0.75
  • Total miles driven: 0
  • Gallons of gas used: 0
  • Cost of gas used: $0.00
Mark

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Catching Up

Leave it to preparing for and going on vacation to really get one backed up. Three weeks of statistics, and the August monthly statistics are now posted. Sorry for a bulk innundation of numbers.

Mark

August Statistics

Here's how the numbers looked for the second month of the project:

  • Average cost of gas in Olympia, WA for the month: $4.02 per gallon
  • Total distance for each mode of car-free transportation:
    • Walking: 41.15 miles
    • Bicycle: 83.29 miles
    • Bus: 192.28 miles
  • Total car-free miles: 316.22
  • Gallons of gas saved: 12.65
  • Gas expense saved: $51.30
  • Transit fares: $22.00
  • Total miles driven: 254.5
  • Gallons of gas used: 10.18
  • Cost of gas used: $40.20

Well, we now have two months behind us in this project. Gas usage went up this month, entirely due to our vacation out to the Olympic Peninsula. I'm really pleased with how we are doing with this.


Mark

10th Week Statistics

Dates: August 28 - September


Here are the statistics for the week:

  • Gas in Olympia, WA this week: $3.94 per gallon
  • Total distance for each mode of car-free transportation:
    • Walking: 8.45 miles
    • Bicycle: 15.14 miles
    • Bus: 20.31 miles
  • Total car-free miles: 43.9
  • Gallons of gas saved: 1.76
  • Gas expense saved: $6.92
  • Transit fares: $0.00
  • Total miles driven: 146.8
  • Gallons of gas used: 5.872
  • Cost of gas used: $23.14

This week included our return from vacation, so more driving (but not that much)

Mark

9th Week Statistics

Dates: August 22 - 28

Here are the statistics for the week:

  • Gas in Olympia, WA this week: $3.96 per gallon
  • Total distance for each mode of car-free transportation:
    • Walking: 9.93 miles
    • Bicycle: 9.97 miles
    • Bus: 11.54 miles
  • Total car-free miles: 31.44
  • Gallons of gas saved: 1.26
  • Gas expense saved: $4.98
  • Transit fares: $3.00
  • Total miles driven: 107.7
  • Gallons of gas used: 4.308
  • Cost of gas used: $17.06

During this week, we headed out on our vacation. Since we were taking bikes and kayaks, we had to drive to our destination.


Mark

8th Week Statistics

Dates: August 15 - 21

Here are the statistics for the week:

  • Gas in Olympia, WA this week: $3.96 per gallon
  • Total distance for each mode of car-free transportation:
    • Walking: 9.72 miles
    • Bicycle: 20.66 miles
    • Bus: 26.53 miles
  • Total car-free miles: 56.91
  • Gallons of gas saved: 2.28
  • Gas expense saved: $9.01
  • Transit fares: $4.50
  • Total miles driven: 0
  • Gallons of gas used: 0
  • Cost of gas used: $0.00

Mark