Monday, February 9, 2015

Driving update for February 2015: Dez

I concluded Zombies and Grammys by telling my readers "Stay tuned for the driving update.  Dez the new car should turn over 45,000 miles tomorrow."  It's tomorrow, so it's time for the update.

Dez's odometer currently stands at 44,998.  I'll get the two miles on the way to work today.  That means it will have been 86 days since Dez passed 44,000 miles on Saturday, November 15th for an average of 11.63 miles/day or 354.7 miles/month.  At least that's less than the average of 12.5 miles/day or 381.25 miles/month for the 600 miles my wife and I drove the car between our purchase of it and when it passed 44,000 miles.  At least the miles driven on Dez decreased since the last update, although it's markedly more than the 7.14 miles/day and 217.9 miles/month for Ruby during the comparable period a year earlier.  It seems my prediction for driving is already coming true.
I expect our miles will go up, as the new neighborhood is not as walkable and the location is farther away from one of my worksites although about the same distance from the other, while the commute is much quicker.
I already got preliminary confirmation of this in last month's driving update.
The total for all cars over 101 days since Ruby's last update is then 2274.5 miles for an average of 22.52 miles/day and 686.86 miles/month.  That's a lot more than the  19.1 miles/day and 581.7 miles/month for the previous cumulative update on December 28, 2013, 3.4 miles/day and 105 miles/month more in fact.  As I expected, my wife and I drove a lot more year-over-year because of a new car and all the driving required in looking for and buying a house, then moving.  I expect we'll drive even more because of the car-dependent neighborhood.
I'll wait until both cars turn over their odometers again to calculate the cumulative mileage for the next confirmation of the trend.

Speaking of trends, it looks like my wife and I are contributing to a greater one, as Calculated Risk reported last month Vehicle Miles Driven increased 1.1% year-over-year in November, Nearing All Time High.  Here's the graph.


At this rate, Bill McBride of Calculated Risk thinks the U.S. might set a new high this year.  We'll see.

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