Mileage Test

With gasoline prices approaching $5/gallon (my car drinks the premium stuff), I decided to try and see how driving habits can affect mileage. I read/heard that the slower you drive on the freeway (safely), the better your gas mileage. So on my weekly nighttime commute from Orange County to Torrance, I tested to see if speed affected mileage.

Both times I tried to set the cruise control and not touch the brakes. The route was the same: 55S/22W transition, 22 West, 405 North, 110 South, 223rd Street exit.

Trial 1:
Saturday, October 6
Average speed = 59.6 mph
Average mileage = 32.4 mpg

Trial 2:
Saturday, October 13
Average speed = 67.4 mph
Average mileage = 30.5 mpg

The data was from the onboard trip computer; I reset the counter at the beginning of the trip. Before this, I had never reset the computer, and my average mileage was ~23 mpg over 29,000 miles of combined highway/city driving. I was surprised at the high mileage numbers since my car is pretty large and has a 300 hp V6 engine. I was also surprised that I got a 2 mpg improvement by driving 60 mph instead of ~70 mph, even though it was a bit scary to be the slowest guy on the road. Finally, changes in velocity also affected mileage. The effect was most evident when I had to slow down for the 405N/110S interchange since it was a big right-handed loop. I probably had to slow to ~35 mph, then accelerate back to speed. The drop in mileage was ~0.2 mpg on the computer display even though I've driven ~35 miles.

Save gas, drive slow(er)!

Friday Traffic

Ugh. It's going to take me 2 hours to get home. :(

Traffic Signals

I left for work at 8:00am this morning and it took me 25 minutes to drive ~8 miles on Crenshaw Blvd. Sure there is a lot of local rush hour traffic but almost every traffic signal at a major intersection was red. Here is a list of all the traffic signals on Crenshaw and whether it was red or green on my drive this morning:

Crenshaw Blvd. Northbound:
235th St* - green
Sepulveda Blvd* - red
SCROC/Robinson Honda - green
Plaze Del Amo - red
Carson St* - red
El Dorado St - green
Torrance Blvd* - red
Maricopa St - red
208th St - green
Del Amo Blvd - red
190th* - red
405S on/off ramp - green
182nd* - green
Artesia Blvd* - red
Cherry/166th St* - red
Redondo Beach Blvd* - red
El Camino College - green
Manhattan Beach Blvd* - green
154th St - red
Marine Ave* - red
147th St - green
Rosecrans Ave* - red
135th St* - red
El Segundo Blvd* - red
Jack Northrop Ave - green

Whew. I was jotting down all the green signals on my iPad and had to verify the traffic signals using Google Maps Street View. Anyway, there are definitely more red lights (15/25 = 60%) than green lights (10/15 = 40%). However, if you look at major cross-streets (defined by a yellow road on Google Maps), the ratio is much worse with 11/14 = 79% red lights and only 3/14 = 21% green lights. Why? If there was no control, you would expect a 50/50 chance of getting a green light at major intersections, since Crenshaw is a major street. Assuming that major streets have a longer green duration than minor streets, I should expect more green lights than red over the entire trip (4/11 reds on non-major intersections).

Hmm. I thought cities timed traffic signals on major streets during rush hour to ease traffic flow. From my "experiment" this morning, it doesn't seem like there's much coordination. I drove through three cities (Torrance, Gardena, and Hawthorne) and they all seemed to not have any traffic light management. Of course this is only one (detailed) observation but from anecdotal experience, I notice that I hit a lot of red lights on my local commute both ways. It almost seems like there is coordination/conspiracy(!) to slow traffic... a lot of the red lights are full duration too, i.e., just turned from yellow to red as I approached the intersection. Seriously, I think I could save 10 minutes on my commute if there was some traffic flow coordination.

Maybe I'll start taking Prairie or Western in the future, even though it adds 2 miles to the drive distance.

Frameographer - Work to Home

I know it's kinda boring but I love this kind of stuff. I think my dream job would be sitting behind a huge CCTV wall (Closed Circuit, not China Central) as a security guard watching everyone, although those guys usually gets killed first when baddies take over the building.



I recorded my commute home today. I tried to get the navigation app on my Android phone in the shot but I couldn't get the right angle and it covered some of the frame. Nothing exciting happened but the "sunset" (it was behind me) was kinda cool... the sky got dark really fast. The iPhone 4 camera also wasn't very good with high contrast images. When it got dark, the bright screen on my Android phone basically wiped out the rest of the image. Not sure why it didn't go into night mode. Arg, too much technology.

Frameographer iPhone App

My 42 mile commute to work compressed down to 2 minutes. I used FramesFrameographer on my iPhone 4 and a suction cup camera holder. The app took a picture every second (or a bit longer) and compiled it into a movie file. I ended up with 1799 frames and set the app to play back at 15 fps for a 2 minute video.



Freeways: 55, 22, 405, 110. I didn't take the 105 at the end but rather exited on El Segundo Blvd. The resulting movie was a 213MB MPEG4 file at 1280x720.

My Tracks 2011-07-07

AM
Total Distance 40.40 miles
Total Time 53:13
Max Speed 89.48 mph
Average Speed 45.54 mph

I started tracking about a mile after leaving the house so it took ~55 minutes total.

==========

PM
Total Distance: 41.34 miles
Total Time: 49:00
Max Speed: 87.24 mph
Average Speed: 50.61 mph