When I use GPS, I enter my destination and choose the fastest option. The idea of calculating a couple minutes vs. few bucks in tolls always felt petty and unnecessary. But this Friday was SO egregious that I had to reconsider.
Driving home from Avalon, Google Maps gave us two choices:
- Option A: 2 hours 4 minutes, $13.50 in tolls
- Option B: 2 hours 13 minutes, $0 in tolls
My auto-fastest-route brain did a double take. How is that possible? I can save $13.50 by driving 9 extra minutes?! Is that even true? I thought E-ZPass was like… not real money anyway.
Humans think at the margins. I’d drive an extra one minute to save $100. But I wouldn’t drive an extra 100 minutes to save $1. We make these intuitive tradeoffs all the time. It’s easy to SAY “I always pick the fastest route no matter what“, but for certain dollar amount, every human will drive the extra 9 minutes.
$13.50 for 9 minutes is the equivalent of ~$185k annual salary. And this money is tax free! Not too shabby!
Meg and I talked it over and found that in that moment, our threshold for what 9 minutes was worth was under $13.50. We’ll pocket the extra 3 gallons of gas (thanks a lot Obama) to drive the extra 9 minutes (I’m aware we’re using extra gas for this route). There’s also an element of wanting to stick it to the government for how excessive tolls have become. $13.50 to go from Avalon to Doylestown? C’mon man.
The cherry-on-top was the ‘slower’ route ended up arriving 9 minutes early! We had our cake and ate it too. Suck it.
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