Tracking My Trips: June 2012

Starting June 1, 2012, I have tracked all of my travel to see if I could reduce my dependence on driving without affecting my quality of life. I have summarized the first month of results from this experiment below.

Overall, my trip profile in June shows half the number of car trips of a typical individual in the U.S. (Source: 2009 data, National Household Travel Survey.)

	Car	Transit	Walk	Other (air, car share, carpool, cycling)
My Trips	48%	9%	37%	6%
U.S. Average	83%	2%	10%	4%

The Downside

• As expected, the biggest hit to my quality of life was time. On average, my travel time increased 32 minutes a day compared with the amount of time it would have taken me to travel the same distance in a car. Of course, this comparison does not take into account the recreational benefit associated with alternative forms of transportation, such as walking.

The Upside

• Health: Simply through my daily movements around the city, I burned 32 more calories and exercised 7 minutes longer per day than the U.S. Surgeon General’s recommendation of 30 minutes of moderate physical activity (equivalent to 140 calories for a 154 lb person).
• Savings: Even after factoring in the cost of bus tickets and car share rentals, on average, I saved $1.95 per day in the cost of gas and mileage. 
• Eco: Using U.S. EPA estimates of average passenger car CO2 emissions, I avoided 36,183 grams of CO2, which is roughly equivalent to taking 2 cars off the road for a day.

All in all, the first month of the experiment seems to have gone well. The increased trip time only became an inconvenience when I arrived late to a meeting. However, that only happened twice, and I am improving in my ability to time which bus to take and how far ahead of time I need to arrive at the bus stop.

We’ll see if I will be able to replicate this month’s trip profile in future months.