Both cars turned over their odometers this week, so its time for a double driving update, just like the one I wrote
for September. Pearl passed 30,000 miles on Tuesday and Dez passed 53,000 miles on Wednesday. After doing the calculations, Dez's odometer showed 52,000 miles on September 19, while Pearl's was at 29,000 on September 21 (happy birthday to me!) Those mean that it took me 41 days for me to drive Pearl 1,000 miles and my wife 44 days to drive Dez the same distance. That means I drove 24.39 miles/day and 743.90 miles/standard month while my wife traveled 22.73 miles/day and 693.18 miles/standard month over the past seven weeks. Combined, we drove our cars 47.12 miles/day and 1437.08 miles/standard month since the last update. Those are a lot more than the 17.54 miles per day and 535.1 (535.09) miles per standard month for Pearl, 6.90 miles per day and 210.34 miles per standard month for Dez, and combined 24.93 miles per day and 760.4 miles per standard month from September. I drove as much during the past month-and-one-half as both of us drove during the previous two months!
So what changed? I performed a lot of volunteering for the election, canvassing for candidates and dropping off lawn signs. My wife visited our daughter in Chicago. As long as gas is relatively cheap, we can afford to do things that are as high a priority as sustainability, such as family and politics. The good news for our gas consumption is that the election is over and our daughter and her dogs will visit us for Thanksgiving. In addition, I'll have fewer meetings to attend. All that should reduce our driving considerably for the rest of the year, possibly even back to normal, which would be at or below 1,000 miles per month for both cars.
Our increased driving puts us in good company, as the
Department of Transportation reported last month.
- Travel on all roads and streets changed by 3.4% (9.3 billion vehicle miles) for August 2016 as compared with August 2015.
- Travel for the month is estimated to be 284.9 billion vehicle miles.
- The seasonally adjusted vehicle miles traveled for August 2016 is 268.6 billion miles, a 2.5% (6.5 billion vehicle miles) increase over August 2015. It also represents a 0.8% decrease (-2.2 billion vehicle miles) compared with July 2016.
- Cumulative Travel for 2016 changed by 3.1% (65.3 billion vehicle miles).
- The cumulative estimate for the year is 2,152.4 billion vehicle miles of travel.
Calculated Risk displayed the data showing the increased miles driven for all Americans.
True, we actually did not contribute to the higher miles driven during August, as we actually drove less this August than last August, as I reported in
Pearl's driving update for December 2015, but I'm sure we'll add to the increased driving for September through November.
Stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment entry. Leave a comment here or surf over the
the blog's Facebook page to vote for the topic of tomorrow's entry. The choices are box office and reviews for the opening weekends of "Arrival" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and how they compare to "
Doctor Strange," more on "
Westworld," trailers for "Rogue One" and "Wonder Woman," marches for the winners of the Electoral College and the popular vote, or write-in votes for any other entertainment topic (
ETA: such as the death of Leonard Cohen, whose music I've
used twice). I count those, as last Sunday's entry shows. That was decided by one person. It could be you.
