An easy, cost-free way to help our regional economy is to reduce the miles we drive. None of the gas we use for our daily travels is produced here, so the money we spend on gas—minus the $0.45 per gallon local and state taxes—all leaves the region and state. Until we all drive cars powered by electricity—much of what can be generated locally—we can keep money local by reducing our miles driven. This is not peanuts: let’s do some math.
First, note that tracking our total mileage is complex, and isolating the costs for a specific region is considerably more difficult. But we can estimate our mileage and costs accurately enough to illustrate our potential savings.
Using the most recent data available, we learn that the average American motorist[i] drove about 13,500 miles in 2016, or about 37 miles per day, according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). That number was about the same in our region per the U. S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). A lower national number was found in a survey by the research arm of the American Automobile Association, which found that respondents drove about 31.5 miles per day in 2016. Since we don’t want to overestimate our possible savings, let’s use the lower number.
Included in AAA’s number are miles driven for vacations, weekends, etc., but we’re interested in just the gas purchased locally. For our purpose, we’ll discount the number by 20% to remove extra-regional purchases. That comes to about 25 miles per day. While this may sound high to some of you, just watch your odometer for a week.
Now we need to know how many of us are on the road each day. This is a more difficult number to figure, but we have some numbers to give us a good idea.
The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles shows that there were about 525,000 driver licenses in Monroe County in 2016. These licenses cover all vehicle classes from automobiles to motorcycles to commercial trucks, and we can assume that some people had separate licenses for different vehicles.
Let’s focus on typical commuting vehicles: cars and light trucks. At the end of 2017, the state DMV showed that Monroe County had about 490,000 of these (along with 40,000 commercial trucks, 1000 buses and 16,000 motorcycles, all in round numbers). Along with assorted vehicles like ambulances and taxis, the total number of on-road motor vehicles was about 575,000, slightly higher than the number of driver licenses.
For argument’s sake, let’s say that one-half of our cars and light trucks—about 240,000—are used for commuting each day. This makes sense, as the US Census Bureau estimates that 65% of the county population of working age is in the civilian workforce, or about 370,000 workers. Discounting for other modes of transportation like carpooling, cycling and public transit, the estimate of 240,000 feels right.
The next number we need is fuel efficiency for the average light vehicle, which we get from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics of the USDOT: 22 miles per gallon in 2016. [Note that this is based on the actual vehicles on the road, not the CAFE—corporate average fuel economy—standard of the federal government.]
Gas prices are about $2.40/gallon in our area according to a quick online survey. Included in this price are state and local taxes of about $0.45/gallon and a federal tax of $0.19/gallon. We’ll take both of these out of our calculations, since we only want to know what leaves our local economy. We’ll also take out the remarkably small amount that stays with the local gas station, which are pennies. Therefore, our cost of gas today, that is the money that goes to economies in other states or countries, is about $1.75 per gallon.
So here’s what we have: 240,000 vehicles drive an average of 25 miles per day, covering an astounding 6 million miles and burning 272,000 gallons of gas in Monroe County alone. The cost of gas for each mile is 8 cents, so we send about $480,000 out of our region each day.
Here’s a challenge.
Reduce your driving by 10% daily, just 2.5 miles, by any means possible. That would allow us to keep $48,000 every
day, or $12 million annually just on commuting days.
[i] Americans drove an estimated at 3.21 trillion miles in 2018. With a population of 327 million people, the average person was conveyed about 9900 miles in a motor vehicle. Since not all people drive, the average vehicle operator drove about 13,500 miles.
