It is very flat here, no hills to speak of, but most speed limits are 45 mph (traffic moving a bit faster) and there are stop lights every 1 to 3 miles. Now in a reasonable world, these lights would be coordinated so one could travel many miles on a main road without being stopped. Not so here! There are lots of local governments that have control over their own lights. Therefore, they aren't in sync and the driver gets to stop a lot.
This doesn't help mileage! Going from zero to 50 then back to zero every two miles for a twenty-five mile trip is wasteful; to put it mildly! I typically drive our pickup truck. It's a small one (for the breed) with only a 5.3 liter gasoline engine. It really gets pretty good mileage considering what it is and our local conditions. I have raised it's in-town miles per gallon from 15 to 18 (from 15l/100km to 13l/100km) by using a 2000 rpm limit. I just keep a light foot on the accelerator and it will shift at 2000. I keep up with most traffic using this technique. It's easy enough to pass me while I'm accelerating but only about ten percent of cars do. This country is known for it's non-adherence to the idea of the left lane is the fast lane. I do though, basically I never use the left lane because I know my acceleration will be too slow for those folks. Here's a picture from the driver's seat going over the Bay Bridge; you see 2000 rpm isn't too tough on my desire to move quickly. You might also manage to make out that the truck has 110,000 miles (175,000 km or so); about 40,000 of which were towing our 7,000 pound travel trailer. It's a very nice vehicle; American car manufacturers may be losing money hand over fist but they are building some pretty nice machines.
Have a good one!
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