Gassed (The Coronavirus Diaries, Part XVIII)
I feel it's worth noting that I went from January 3 to September 4 on a single tank of gas. That's just shy of eight months. In all likelihood, I will not buy another tank of gas for my car this year, especially now that I'm working from home officially.
M's been going to the park pretty regularly, and her car has become the de facto "we drive somewhere together" car, as with our trip to Columbus. Coupled with the lower mileage her Subaru gets compared to my Civic, she's buying about 1.5 tanks of gas a month. That's still far less than she was buying when she had a daily commute.
Still, for our family at least the pandemic has dramatically reduced our gasoline costs. My gas log says that I was buying 3 tanks of gas a month pre-pandemic plus more when we traveled, so call it 40 tanks a year. I don't have numbers for M, but presumably it was something similar since she drove farther in heavier traffic. Now we're down to maybe ten tanks on the year. That's a nice cut downward. Hurrah for saving money and at least marginally the environment.
And yes, I log the gas I purchase. I have nice notebook in my glove compartment that has cycled through every car I've owned. I also the notebook to log major maintenance so I have the list handy when I'm at the mechanic. I've never had a single page of that log with 3+ years on it before!
I'm very curious as to what traffic numbers will look like in the next year. Will enough people be working at home to make traffic less problematic for those forced to go downtown? Will the people working at home cause knock off effects on the downtown workers, driving the numbers down further? Or will some of those offices turn into condos and apartments and put more people downtown, negating the changes? I look forward to finding out.
M's been going to the park pretty regularly, and her car has become the de facto "we drive somewhere together" car, as with our trip to Columbus. Coupled with the lower mileage her Subaru gets compared to my Civic, she's buying about 1.5 tanks of gas a month. That's still far less than she was buying when she had a daily commute.
Still, for our family at least the pandemic has dramatically reduced our gasoline costs. My gas log says that I was buying 3 tanks of gas a month pre-pandemic plus more when we traveled, so call it 40 tanks a year. I don't have numbers for M, but presumably it was something similar since she drove farther in heavier traffic. Now we're down to maybe ten tanks on the year. That's a nice cut downward. Hurrah for saving money and at least marginally the environment.
And yes, I log the gas I purchase. I have nice notebook in my glove compartment that has cycled through every car I've owned. I also the notebook to log major maintenance so I have the list handy when I'm at the mechanic. I've never had a single page of that log with 3+ years on it before!
I'm very curious as to what traffic numbers will look like in the next year. Will enough people be working at home to make traffic less problematic for those forced to go downtown? Will the people working at home cause knock off effects on the downtown workers, driving the numbers down further? Or will some of those offices turn into condos and apartments and put more people downtown, negating the changes? I look forward to finding out.