I doubt she can save enough gas to be "worth it" to ride her bike part way. I don't know how far she is riding, but the last few minutes of a drive are when the car gets the best gas mileage, as it is warmed up. The first 10 minutes are generally worse for gas mileage. Cutting 10 miles off her trip, if her truck gets 20 mpg after it is warmed up, would save her $2 a day. But 10 miles of bike riding is expensive.
If her entire commute is 90 miles a day, at 15 mpg average, that is 6 gallons a day of gas, or $24.
Is it worth $24 to camp out in the back of your truck? Maybe, the article doesn't say how much it costs to stay at the campsite and use the shower. You could cut the cable premium channels, or turn the A/C up 1 degree higher and replace a few light bulbs with CFL, and probably save about as much.
Now, if her truck gets 12 mpg, that's $30 a day, or about $150 a week, or $7000 a year.
If she went out and spent $2000 on an old corolla (I did this in 2004 and it cost $900), she could get 30 mpg, and cut her fuel costs to $12 a day, $60 a week, or $3200 a year, which would save her $1800 in the first year, more than she saves camping.
Of course, a lot of people decided to own property far from where they work. They generally (not always) are less connected to their community because they work so far away, and often leave early and get home late. They can't pop in for lunch, or attend community activities, or meet their kids for school stuff very easily.
While people who live and work in a community want most to spend their tax dollars making the community better, people who commute long distances primarily want their taxes spent on day care for kids, and for more roads to get them to their work.
They drive up the costs of living "out in the country", because they have higher-paying jobs associated with near-city living, but live out where the jobs pay less and are less plentiful. This puts pressure on those who want to live and work in the same location, drives up their taxes, puts a strain on services.
In the end, I understand their plight now that gasoline isn't so cheap. But I don't have enough sympathy for them, I guess.
Well, then, she should ride her bike the first ten miles and commute from there. Then she'd get that advantage of efficiency (kinda like daylight savings). ;-P
The article stated that the woman in question is a nurse. There are nursing jobs everywhere, from small town hospitals to doc in a box clinics, to schools. She could take a lesser paying position much closer to home and the cost savings in commuting more than makes up for it.
Correct. She should bike the first leg and the drive the rest of the way.