Each time the adjacent meter had some time left on it and my meter had expired. And it was no small amount of time either--25 and 45 minutes--so I did what I decided any rational person would do. I moved my vehicle to that meter and supplemented with an appropriate amount of change.
Then I wondered if it was worth it to start my vehicle and move it to the new meter position. Is it possible that I would spend more in gas starting and moving the car than I would save by pumping coins into the meter? Assuming that I had not actually been paying the wrong meter, saving 25 minutes saves about $0.25, or about 1/11th a gallon of gas. That's 0.091 gallons in savings, but it seems entirely likely that starting the engine costs the same or more.
This question is more circumstantial than it appears, given that vehicles with larger engines use more gas at startup. Drivers of these cars are usually also less concerned with the fuel cost of operating the vehicle (or else they would buy a vehicle with a smaller, less powerful and more fuel efficient engine), in part because the total cost of the vehicle is higher. Contrarily, drivers of vehicles that consume less fuel also pay less for the vehicle they drive, so it seems that whether you should move your car to save $0.25 or $0.50 depends as much on the type of driver you are as it does the cost of the fuel used to make the positional change.
Of course I'm unable to find any real idea how much it costs me to start my car and back it up 12 feet. I'm sure it's under $0.25 since each mile driven has cost me $0.18 so far. That's in the Honda V6 engine of my vehicle.
5 comments:
So yeah...I'm a 9 cents per mile kind of guy. That's with gas at 2.75, too. Isn't that great? What was the price from which you calculated?
Hmmm... well, at $2.75 I get 15mpg ($0.18/mile) and the quarter is 1/11th a gallon (0.091) and I read where somebody tried to calculate how much gas was sprayed into the engine during a normal two-second start (which seems longer than normal) and in the end his calculations seemed circumspect and inconsequential when I considered that the sort of person who is concerned with fuel economy for financial reasons will choose to move the car to save a quarter. The person who chooses a car without regard for fuel cost is likely not concerned with saving a quarter nor with runon sentences like the previous.
We're paying $2.95 a gallon out in CA, but with super tight spaces and crazy drivers, can you figure in a risk assessment of backing up into someone or dinging a door during the reparking process? If such an event did occur, it would drive up your cost of insurance to the point where it was far from worth saving the initial quarter. And then I'm thinking the elevated stress response (and subsequent heart disease) or sore neck that could occur might take a few days or months off your projected lifespan. However, better to decide prior to looking at the meter what you will do, lest a piano or tree fall on you while contemplating...
well these questions are appropriate for shreveport and maybe few other places. what other types of city environment would offer you an empty meter space adjacent to yours with money in the meter and without a car waiting to take the parking space. since i've got no competition for that space and no reason to fear unprovoked injury from inanimate objects, the only thing left to consider is the likelihood that the man sitting on the bench beside my car will ask me for money.
and by the way, that's too many factors for me to consider. the little research training i've had was in the isolation of variables. i don't think i'd do very well with any covariance or multivariance. i'd have to find a copy of that stats software i kept from that job and even then i don't think i could figure out the data.
and if i do spend any time looking crunching numbers, it will likely be trying to argue that greg maddux's unluckiness would be much more common if he weren't such an uncommonly good pitcher.
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