(no subject)

[geekchick]

Today is Prickle-Prickle, day 25 in the season of Bureaucracy, 3271.

I knew I should've topped off the gas tank yesterday -- the price of a gallon of gas at the place I normally stop on the way home from work went up about 70 cents overnight, it's $3.29 now. Half a tank of gas cost me more than $22. I'm not in a position right now where I can buy a hybrid, but at least my car gets between 30 and 32 mpg highway and so it's not as bad as it could be. I'll be looking to consolidate trips as much as I can.

I miss living in an area where I didn't have to depend on a car to do pretty much anything at all. Right now, I live 25 miles and at least half an hour by car from my office, and there is absolutely nothing in the way of public transportation that goes to Warrenton. I would love to take the train or the bus to work, but it's just not an option; while there's some extremely limited amount of bus service here (confined mostly to rush hours, and if you travel outside that time or in a different direction, you're pretty much screwed), there's absolutely zero further out. The closest commuter rail stop is in fact the only one that is even remotely close to my office, so that's not exactly a big help. This area isn't terribly pedestrian-friendly and isn't at all designed to be convenient for people who don't have a car. While I personally wouldn't have much of a problem moving closer to my office and having a shorter commute, that shifts a bigger problem on to C., who works in Bethesda and I don't think would relish the idea of a more than 120 mile daily commute. Ideally, I'd be able to move back into Arlington and live within walking distance of or an easy bus commute to a Metro stop again, but the big problems there are that the job is still out past what qualifies as a DC suburb even with the sprawl and that's not going to change, and it is ungodly expensive to live someplace with Metro access. I used to live in Westover when I worked at Georgetown, and I really liked the neighborhood a lot. There were two nearby Metro stops with near-constant bus service to either place, there was a grocery store (which I think is actually not there anymore), a nifty variety and hardware store and a couple of good restaurants within walking distance. I didn't have a car, and almost never needed one. Unfortunately, there's no way I could afford to buy a place there now and needing to commute to Warrenton every day would negate most of the benefit of living near the Metro.

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Toni and I were just talking about trading in one of the 'rus and getting a Prius or something (and until we're off this hill, just driving the remaining Subaru when there's bad snow), but we're upside down on the Baja still and can't swing another car payment until I have significant income. And I can relate about being in a car-dependent area. Public transit here sucks.

Hybrids aren't as big a deal as you might think

[telnar.livejournal.com]

I just looked up the mileage for the Toyota Prius, and it's 51 MPG highway, 60 MPG city. Figure that's an average of 55 MPG on a typical driving mix. If you drive 10,000 miles in a year, that means 182 gallons of gas instead of the 323 you would have used at 31 MPG. An extra 141 gallons per year sounds like a lot, but even at $3.29/gallon, the $464 per year in fuel savings wouldn't even pay the VA car tax on a new Prius.

You would probably need to drive a truly huge number of miles (off the cuff I'd say more than 50,000 / year) to justify buying a new car in preference to keeping a reliable 5 year old car (of course, the exact numbers will vary depending on the type of car you already have and what kind of shape it's in). One reason this seems so skewed is that older cars are cheaper to own in general than brand new cars, but hybrids haven't been around for long enough for there to be many used ones on the market.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

Buying a hybrid at the moment is a poor move anyway, their prices are hiked through the roof, and realistically they're only 20-25% better than your current ride for gas mileage. However, they're fairly primitive first-generation efforts, better ones will be coming along soon. I may pounce on one of the second generation offerings (I have one in particular in mind), or possibly graft an APU onto an electric scheme and build my own turbine-electric voltswagen.