Most efficient route to work

For all of you commuters out there, have any of you determined the most efficient route for driving to work? If so, what was your procedure?


I have a ~20 mile (each way) commute to work and I'm going to start logging my MPG for the various routes I take (including some new ones!). My plan is to travel each route consistently (both ways) for a work-week, starting the week with my MFD mpg readout at 0 (I don't have a ScanGauge yet, otherwise I would use it as a cross-check). At the end of the work-week, I will log my final MPG for that route and begin the next route the following week. Obviously, this isn't the ideal time for doing this kind of test in New England (since the temperature will be dropping) so I may need to repeat in the spring.


I'm hoping that the most efficient route will yield at least a little less gas consumption by driving it consistently through the year. Even if I only see a small increase in efficiency, it will be a fun experiment
I've attached a couple of PDFs that I created from Google Earth (for reference) with the elevation profile of each route as well as some basic route information.


Any bets on which route will yield the best mpg? If I change the home-bound route, which do you think will be more efficient? Also looking for comments on the procedure.

 

Hmm, good point. If you looked at the PDF, you'll see that one of the routes has 11 stop lights which can add a lot of variance day-by-day. I may need to extend it to closer to a month per route to get a more accurate result. Maybe I'll wait for spring to start the official experiment, when temperatures are more consistent. If we have anything close to the winter we had last year (snow, then mild temp, then snow, some more snow, then more mild temps) the data will be completely invalid :-P

Anyone else have suggestions regarding the amount of time per route?

 

Richard,

You are correct, I should have elaborated. I am curious about which route has the best MPG with each route varying in terrain and number of stops. More importantly though, I'm concerned with which route provides the best fuel economy (least amount of fuel consumed to get me from Point A to Point B).

1 year seems like an awfully long time to collect data from each route, but you're probably right. With the number of variables, the experiment would need to be performed throughout a full year, through all seasons, for each route to provide an absolutely accurate conclusion.

 

Noted: Will also time the trips and make note of traffic as well as which lights I get stuck at. I drove Route 5 the other day for the first time, great drive. Windy roads, gradual terrain, but a lot of stop signs. BUT, as you said, good to know the route. When the hurricane came through this summer, there was one way out of town for a week and a lot of roads in other towns were impassable.

PS- GREAT avatar! I will never ever ever justify buying one, but it sure is nice to look at :-P

I travel Route 4 pretty often and that big hill is one of the reasons I decided to test my options. After making the elevation profiles, I realized that I could avoid some of the elevation gain but with tradeoffs.

I tried Route 2 last week and there were lots of stops, but it was less stressful than I thought it would be. Something I need to keep in mind: arriving a few minutes late/early at some of these lights makes a HUGE difference in traffic.