An Alternative Way To Travel: Carpooling

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Dear Kate, I would like for you to consider my opinion for a solution to solve your transportation issues. I know how much you dislike driving your gas guzzling SUV daily to and from WVUIT. With the price of gasoline over $3.00 per gallon, commuting twenty miles each direction daily is costing you $160 every month. Don’t forget about vehicle maintenance, tires, and oil changes. There are other people in the same situation. I think that you should carpool to school because you save money; because doing so saves the environment and reduces carbon offset; because you can have more fun spending time with friends; because it is less stressful than fighting traffic daily or searching all over campus to find a place to park; because you save on parking costs; and because your vehicle will have less wear and tear than if you drove it daily. To begin with, you could save so much money simply by carpooling to school. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), the cost of owning and operating a new vehicle in 2007 is an average of 52.2 cents per mile. This includes gasoline, oil, maintenance, tires, and depreciation. For a forty-mile round-trip commute, this comes to $20.88 per day, $438.00 monthly, and $5,261.76 annually. By carpooling with one other person, you could cut your costs in half, costing you only $219.00 monthly. Doing so with two other people would only cost you $146.00 per month. Carpooling with three people costs $109.5 monthly. Simply by carpooling with three others, you could possibly save $328.50 per month, or an amazing amount of $3,942.00 annually. Secondly, by riding to school with others, you are being environmentally healthy. The average car emits almost one pound of carbon dioxide per mile. A forty mile roundtrip emits forty pounds of CO2 emissions. That’s 120 pounds of CO2 each week, or 480 pounds per month. If you

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