Easy way to improve fuel efficiency with pen and paper
By Dr. Selim Erhan, TLT Editor | TLT From the Editor July 2024
How much fuel is lost every single day due to countless road repair sites?
I hope everyone is enjoying the summer months. I am sure most of you have planned a vacation that involves some driving. I love driving because one can stop anywhere one wants and have more flexibility in traveling time and conditions. We in the lubricant industry are doing our best to make these drives as economical and fuel efficient as possible. Vehicle manufacturers work on more fuel-efficient vehicles, and we are working on better lubricants, to reduce friction using the best technology and results from years of studies involving high levels of ingenuity.
We also are well aware that fuel efficiency goes far beyond just saving fuel costs. Most vehicles are burning gasoline or diesel, so there is a significant cost to the environment and to our lives. Storms are getting more powerful and more frequent. Houses are getting flooded by hurricanes, and tornadoes cause severe damage. Recently a colleague was telling me how someone got crushed by a falling tree caused by a tornado while she was trying to park her car in her garage.
Although better engines, different fuels, electrical cars and better tires require a very complex set of improvements, way beyond what we individuals can do, there is an area where we can make significant contributions to fuel economy. Every single adult can make this contribution now, and very effectively. We can significantly reduce the fuel losses caused by stop-and-go traffic.
We can do this by simply writing and contacting our representatives in state and federal governments asking for reform. I live in Illinois and travel frequently to neighboring states. I see road crews working even at night in Wisconsin. In Illinois, at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, I see a major construction site sitting like a ghost! The same with Thursday at 2 p.m.—no workers! There are machines but no people. I was told by a taxi driver, who at one time had worked in road construction, that the contractor would, let’s say, have 100 people on a construction site but divide these workers between several construction sites—prolonging the construction time. When an inspector was going to visit a site, they would pull people from other sites so that site looked as if they were working hard to get the job done. We are sending machines to Mars yet cannot fix a stretch of road for a year.
I live in the suburbs of Chicago. Downtown Chicago is by Lake Michigan, and access to the city is only from the north, south and west with four major highways that carry vehicles in and out of the city. One main artery is I-290, going east-west and goes over a narrow river over a short bridge before it enters downtown. In 2011 that bridge needed repairs, and one side was closed to traffic. It was closed for eight months. After one side was repaired, the other side was closed for repairs. However, there came the G8 Summit at McCormick Place, which closed another artery for security reasons. So, the second half of the bridge was silently completed in two weeks. This year Chicago rose to the #1 city for traffic congestion. Chicago can build a magnificent skyscraper in a year but cannot repair a road in a year.
How much fuel is lost every single day due to countless road repair sites around the country? There is a huge amount of money that goes into building and repairing roads, and this amount brings out the worst in many people. We have to look into this and keep at it until the roads are repaired utilizing today’s technology.
I also don’t buy the arguments that harsh weather is responsible for a lot of road damage. I drove in Finland—very close to the North Pole. I did not see a single pothole or crack. I drove in Dubai where summer temperatures are over 122°F (50°C) in the shade. I don’t know what kind of temperatures their asphalt is subjected to every day, but there were no cracks and no ruts anywhere.
This year a taxi driver in Tucson, Ariz., who also had worked in road construction at one time, was saying, “If we would make roads like they did in 1970s, the construction companies would go bankrupt!”
We do have the technology to make roads much more durable and repairs and construction much faster than what we see now. Working through this issue will improve our lives by ending the nerve-racking torture of sitting hours in traffic and decrease the risk of accidents caused by road rage because of this congestion. We also will eliminate a very significant amount of tax dollars that can be spent on much needed areas. We should write now!
Dr. Selim Erhan is director of business development for Process Oils Inc. in Trout Valley, Ill. You can reach him at serhan@processoilsinc.com.