Well, if you live in a big city then you have big-time traffic headaches.  Across the country, this is almost a universal story.  ”Rush Hour” has become one of the most used oxymorons in the American lexicon as there is no “rush” anymore, just a wave of similarly unlucky souls who trek the “freeways” together twice a day in a slow moving parade before and after our already hectic workdays.  And as for that “hour” thing, well in many metropolitan areas morning Rush Hour begins before 7:00 a.m. and extends until nearly 10:00.  The evening comute home is no better with its similar 3 hour slowing of the transportation arteries.

No matter how you look at it we spend too much time stuck in traffic.  But things are getting better, according to the latest US Census Bureau reports, the average daily commute in the U.S. has dropped to 24.3 minutes from its previous high (unfortunately those in New York still spend an average 30.4 minutes going to and from work every day).  If you add this up though, even with a modest commute, we all spend better than 80 hours of our lives driving every year to and from work.  I don’t know about you, but I would rather spend this time doing something better than sitting bumper to bumper with my gas-dollars spewing out of my tailpipe.

That brings us to the commuters community - the ever familiar carpool.  From taking the kids to school events, to professionals on their way to the office, carpooling has become a staple of American society.  It is so engrained in our way of life that Department of Transportation policies now require H.O.V. (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes on most new freeway construction projects just to accomidate all of the carpoolers.

In coming posts, we will take a look at some of the good, bad, and interesting details about carpooling.  As usual, we would appreciate your comments and suggestions. But for today, we would like to throw out this one idea for carpoolers: be sure to use a rewards-based card when purchasing your gas for the ride.  True, this may seem a bit self-serving, but if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.  Since a carpool cuts down on the cost of your daily commute (a group of 4 people can save 75% on their daily gas costs), a rewards-based gas card would extend that savings even further.  On top of that, you could pool your savings to enhance your commuting experience and make the ride not so bad.

This is something you may not have of thought about before, and we hope the suggestion brightens your day a little as we now have to get ready for our ride home in the carpool lane.

Tags: Budget, Carpool, Driving Tips, Money Savings

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Commuting & Commerce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.