Car commuting question

[3okirb]

Unfortunately, I have a very unmustachian commute to work.  Here's the situation:

I have 2 ways that I can go to work and both take 25-30 minutes. 

1)  Almost all highway driving.  20 miles each way.
2)  No highway driving and a lot of stop and go and curves. 16 miles each way. Presumably, more tire/brake, etc. wear, but over a shorter distance.  Presumably worse gas mileage, but over a shorter distance.

So which one is better?  My thoughts are torn.

[alsoknownasDean]

I'd take option 1 purely because it's less stressful.

There is another way to approach this.

Let's take a typical Mustachian car, a 2006 Honda Civic.

According to this, it gets 26MPG in the city, and 34MPG on the highway.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/noframes/21737.shtml

Hence, for the city commute, it uses 16/26 gallons (0.615g) and in the highway commute it uses 20/34 gallons (0.588g). The difference in fuel use is 0.027 gallons in favour of option 1, which at $3 a gallon, is $0.08. Basically it's close enough to be fuck all.

Go for option 1 and try and hypermile a bit. Better still is taking public transport or riding a bike (at least partway). :)

[Syonyk]

#1, any day.  Steady speed highway driving is much, much easier on a car than stop and go twisty driving, burns less fuel, and is radically less stressful.

[3okirb]

I guess what I was torn about is it saves 8 miles per day (20%).  So does 8 less miles per day counter the added wear of those "harder" miles.

[r3dt4rget]

I guess what I was torn about is it saves 8 miles per day (20%).  So does 8 less miles per day counter the added wear of those "harder" miles.

Not in my experience. #1 is the way to go. Miles are just miles. Cars don't break because they hit certain miles, they break because of the stress of driving most of the time. Highway cruising is way easier on a car than stop/go and curves.