A Lawrence trash truck goes through the K-Tag turnpike toll gate to enter Interstate 70 from North Iowa Street on a Thursday morning in April

If time really is money, then three minutes is worth about 30 cents in Lawrence.

At least it is if you are in a trash truck.

Day in and day out, Lawrence trash truck drivers tally up charges on city-owned K-Tags to access the Kansas Turnpike to drive the approximately two miles between the East Lawrence interchange and the West Lawrence interchange.

Each trip costs about 25 cents to 30 cents, depending on the size of the truck. During the course of 2008, city trash trucks made 4,098 trips between the East Lawrence and West Lawrence toll plazas, according to an analysis of city K-Tag records by the Journal-World.

Or in other words, about 11 trips per day.

But city leaders said there’s a good reason why the turnpike often is a trash truck tollway — the Kansas River.

“It really is kind of a geography thing,” said Bob Yoos, the city’s solid waste superintendent.

Every bundle of trash that gets picked up in Lawrence ultimately heads to the Hamm Sanitary Landfill on the Douglas County-Jefferson County line on U.S. Highway 24-59.

The main thing to know about that location is that it is north of the Kansas River. Most of Lawrence is south of the Kansas River. And as any driver knows, there are only two routes (dry routes, anyway) to cross the Kaw in Lawrence — the bridges in downtown, or the bridges on the Kansas Turnpike.

“Which bridge we use is a driver’s judgment sort of situation,” Yoos said. “But we expect them to do what results in the least amount of miles or the least amount of time.”

Yoos said any time trash is being picked up north of Sixth Street and west of Iowa Street — a large trash-producing area because of the Santa Fe Industrial Park along the turnpike — using the turnpike results in both less miles and less time than going all the way back to Sixth Street to connect with the downtown bridges.

When crews are picking up trash south of Sixth Street, Yoos said a “general rule of thumb” is that crews will use the turnpike if they are west of Iowa Street because it will save valuable time.

“There’s usually less traffic for us to navigate if we take the turnpike,” Yoos said.

How much time is there to be saved?

The Journal-World timed the trip from Sixth and Iowa Street to the East Lawrence interchange using both the turnpike route and the city street route. In a pickup truck (not a trash truck), the turnpike route was about three minutes faster — four minutes versus seven minutes — in moderately heavy traffic. In relatively light traffic, the difference was about 90 seconds.

Mileage wise, the city street route was about 2.7 miles. The turnpike route was about 3 miles, counting the distance to get from Sixth and Iowa to the turnpike.

But not all miles may be equal, especially when you’re driving a multi-ton trash truck. Yoos said the stop-and-go driving of the city route adds wear to the trucks and decreases fuel mileage.

Oh yeah, what about fuel mileage, you ask? A trash truck averages about 3 to 6 miles per gallon.

“Doing what we can to improve fuel mileage is very important to us,” Yoos said.

Time also is an important factor in the operation. Yoos said that’s particularly the case for the city’s bulk trash collection. The city uses a limited number of trucks to collect trash from large containers at industrial businesses, grocery stores, Kansas University and several other locations around town. Those trucks, generally, can only service one location before needing to head to the landfill to dump their load.

“If we don’t get them back in good time, we start paying overtime to get all the work done,” Yoos said.