When is your city’s "transportation freedom day"?
Posted April 3, 2009 in Living Sustainably, Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
The public interest group U.S.PIRG has calculated the day by which residents of America's metro areas will, on average, have earned enough money to pay for their annual transportation costs. 
If you're lucky, perhaps you live in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose area: if so, you passed your magic day a month ago, on March 1, and everything you earn after that date may be spent on something else.
The region pithily named "New York--Northern New Jersey--Long Island, NY--NJ--CT-PA" is not far behind, the average resident there having earned enough to pay off its transportation bill on March 7. Three regions are only a few days behind, including the Washington, DC area (I'm guessing because we have a great public transportation system, as American regions go, and it is heavily used).
Now that's still two month's pay or a little more just to get around, but for this purpose it beats living in Stockton-Lodi, Tuscon, or Champaign-Urbana, all of which soak up three full months' worth of pay before you can spend it on anything else. To view the whole chart and see how your location fares, go here,
Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.
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Comments
Neil — Apr 3 2009 02:29 PM
On the home page someone has calculated the conversion rates for clean coal and oil.
27 and 50 pound of co2 per gallon. Man that is some conversion. My teachers always believed that mass could not be destroyed only changed in form.
But this conversion is like "wow". More co2, in weight than the original form say 10 pound per gallon.
I have an idea that there is some correalation between this scientific hoohar and the capitalist banking system. They appear to have converted one dollar into 50.
Merry Rabb — Apr 6 2009 01:54 PM
So, the Triangle (NC) beats Charlotte at something yet again.