Anything Goes Commute Challenge: Solo Car Trip

A kindred spirit and bicycle commuter par excellence, Ladyfleur, recently wrote a series about her alternative transportation options for getting to the office. She wrapped up with an open challenge to her readers to do the same. I'm in!

Let's start with my least favorite option: driving to the office during rush hour.

I volunteer for a non-profit organization once per week after work, which means I need my car—any of my transportation alternatives are so impractical that I would just stop volunteering.

To avoid the rush hour crawl, I spent an hour at home in early morning video conferences with colleagues in Europe. I started the clock in my driveway, and stopped it when I parked at the office.

The live traffic map looked promising, so I headed for the first freeway; traffic was flowing nicely. From an overpass, I glanced at the traffic on the next freeway ... and bailed out for the local expressway when I saw three lanes of stopped cars stretching into the distance. For a while I was stuck behind a driver who repeatedly and erratically slowed without braking; when I was finally able to pass her, the reason was clear: SHE WAS TEXTING.

The expressway route is less direct than the freeway and has traffic lights—but they’re synchronized. Given that it was now nearly 10:00 a.m., I exited onto one final freeway and suffered through the expected-but-short traffic jam shown above.

The Stats:

Route: surface streets, freeways, expressway
Distance: 20.12 miles
Elapsed time: 37:46
Average moving speed: 32.92 mph
Exercise time: 0
Reading/relaxing time: 0
Bliss factor: 0
Cost per trip: $11.37
Enables: Volunteer activity after work, followed by grocery shopping.

I will use the same quantitative factors to score my commutes (car: $0.565 per mile, bike: $0.05 per mile) as Ladyfleur, but my qualitative factors are somewhat different:

• Reading/relaxing time:
Motion sickness dissuades me from reading, but if my attention is not required I can listen to podcasts or doze off.
• Bliss factor:
A happiness score on a putative scale of 0-10.
• Enables:
The benefits of this transportation choice.

Do I need to explain the Bliss factor for this trip? [There is no joy in a solo drive in traffic.]