Planning a Trip for Minimum Fuel Use

 If you go to any one of the online driving map services and type in "St. Paul, MN to Ouray, CO", it will pick you a route through Des Moines, Iowa and Grand Junction, Colorado.  I suppose there's a really simple algorithm in the website that assumes the fewer the highways you take, the more direct the route is.  Not necessarily.  However. that's where the freeways go, and that has been my preferred route in the past, because I liked to drive fast.

But  if you're trying to get good mileage, a whole world of possibilities opens up.  When you drive 70 and 80 miles an hour, you are obliged to drive on the freeways.  But if you slow it down to 50-55, you may take any road you please; you can seek out a much more direct route.  So I took a long look at the roads in between points A and B, and re-drew the path Janie and I would take.

One point to make here is that planning a route isn't just drawing a line on a map and taking off.  I'll need to change highways about 25 times, and the potential for making wrong turns or getting lost is very real.  For this reason, I made up a spreadsheet for our laptop, detailing each turn, and the number of miles in each leg of the trip.  We have wireless internet (that connects like a cellphone), and one of the advantages of having the computer up and running while on the road is Janie can be my navigator.  This detailed route planning took about an hour and a half, but my cherished smugness can't take a hit like wasting an hour (and over a gallon of gas) going in the wrong direction. 

My newly chosen route is anywhere between 50 and 80 miles shorter than the freeway path.  I give that range, because the map site will allow me to adjust the route, but fights me the whole way.  Try it and you'll see what I mean.  Each of the letters B through G above marks a point where I moved the route in violation of the software's better judgment.   

I know from experience it takes about 22 hours total to go the freeway route.  It will be interesting to know how many hours the interstate-free route will take.  There's an even shorter route thorough Colby, Kansas. but on the way out we make a point to stop by my brother's place in Boulder.  Later in this series, we'll cover that route, which goes through Colorado Springs.  The speed and distance are not the only factors though.  What about road construction?

511 is a cooperative project of highway departments across the nation.  Apparently, you can also dial 511 on your phone, and wherever you are you can get road conditions, but I've never been a phone person.  More to my liking, you can go to the states' websites, and they'll have maps showing where construction is going on, and often with a detailed description of the type of construction, and the days and hours when it will and will not be underway.    Here's the most useful site I found, with links to 511 websites in all states that border Nebraska (all of the states I'll be driving in border Nebraska).

tgici

The two flagger icons on the bottom are along our route, but one of them is on a side road, and the other represents a project that will be dormant on the day we're coming through.

In contrast, the freeway route - Interstates 35, 80, 76 and 70 - have a total of, count them, thirty construction projects.  In the section showing Omaha and Lincoln, you can barely read the names of those two cities for all the construction and "lane reduction" alerts.  In fact, I've never known that stretch of road to be construction-free, or without an extended stretch of 60-MPH speed limit combined with narrow, snaking, road rage inspiring lanes.

In all fairness many of those construction projects will probably not be going on the weekends.  Nonetheless, the roadway will be in such a condition of roughness or narrowness that you will not be allowed to safely go 70 or 80.  Thus any plan to average 65 miles per hour is but a pipe dream.

Again, I'm wondering if the slow lane is going to take that many more hours.  I'm not so sure it will.  It won't be a contest for time though, because we intend to stop for quite a few yard sales on Saturday morning.

Our last post before our departure will be speculations on making the journey a better time - eating food not vetted by youthful focus groups, enjoying the real Midwestern diversity visible only to those who choose to see it.  Please join us.

There have been three previous posts in this series if you are interested.  Just go here to see them.  Each one bears the image of an abandoned gas station.