Tag Archives: driving

New tool from HUD to estimate combined commuting and housing costs

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Opponents of sprawl argue too many people buy cheaper homes further from the city without considering the added transportation costs. Here is a new tool to help address this issue:

More than 3 in 4 home buyers polled in the National Assn. of Realtors’ latest Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers said commuting costs are either “very” or “somewhat” important to their ultimate purchase decisions. After all, the combined cost of housing and transportation consumes close to half of the typical working family’s monthly budget…

The Location Affordability Portal from the Housing and Urban Development Department and Transportation Department enables users to estimate the combined housing and transportation costs for a specific region, neighborhood and even street.

LAP is actually two tools: one, a map-based Location Affordability Index, is a database that predicts annual housing and transportation costs for a particular area. The other, My Transportation Cost Calculator, enables users to customize data for their own household and potential residential locations.

LAP includes diverse household profiles — which vary by income, size and number of commuters — and shows the affordability landscape for each one across an entire region. It was designed to help renters and homeowners — plus planners, policymakers, developers and researchers — get a more complete understanding of the costs of living in a location given the differences between households, neighborhoods and regions, all of which affect affordability. The data covers 94% of the U.S. population.

Use the tool here. Some good info here. I plugged in some quick numbers of our housing and transportation costs and the yearly transportation costs were about 57% of annual housing costs. Driving, even with commutes that aren’t that far, add up quickly. Here is what the Location Affordability Index looks like for much of the Chicago region:

LocationAffordabilityPortalChicagoArea2

On this map with combined housing and transportation costs, I feel like you can quickly see places where the housing is more expensive (some places on the North Shore) and other places where transportation costs are higher (and where there may be fewer jobs – Will County, western DuPage County).

The idea here is that more people need more information about commuting costs when making housing decisions. If they had the commuting costs, they would choose differently. For how many people would this be true? I suspect some Americans would place more emphasis on a cheaper house, even if the commuting costs are higher. In other words, these aren’t equal considerations when Americans, particularly of certain incomes, have to make a choice.

Amazon’s future might be less about drones and more about operating its own trucks

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The idea of Amazon using delivery drones attracted attention but one commentator thinks owning and operating its own trucks would be more feasible and important:

Ajay Agarwal knows Amazon. As a managing director with Bain Capital Ventures, he led a big investment in Kiva Systems, the warehouse robot company that Amazon paid $775 million for last year. Agarwal says that Amazon may be taking an ever-greater chunk out of the world’s brick-and-mortar retail sales, but physical stores still have Amazon beat in one key area. “What’s the biggest negative of Amazon? Returns,” he says. “It’s a royal pain…I feel like a daily, weekly exercise for me is breaking down boxes, doing returns, printing out return labels, etcetera, etcetera.”

But a dense network of Amazon delivery trucks could make returning unwanted items as easy as taking out the garbage. Unlike electronics or books, which most people shop for sporadically, grocery shopping takes place regularly and often. If Amazon Fresh takes off, that will mean frequent, predictable trips by Amazon trucks down residential streets. For every grocery order delivered, those trucks will have room for another return. “They take packages, and they take packages back,” Agarwal says, much like the milkman who in distant days not only delivered your milk but also picked up the empty bottles. “They control the entire infrastructure.”

That deep control has been a signature element of Amazon’s operations, from the first website visit to the moment an order leaves a warehouse. But that’s when Amazon hands off that order to a third-party carrier, typically UPS or FedEx. Such a concession must drive a control freak like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos nuts — even if those companies have helped cement Amazon’s reputation for reliability by delivering on Amazon Prime’s promise of two-day shipping. With an army of its own trucks on city streets, Amazon cuts out the middle man. Meanwhile, returns could become as easy as handing a box back to the same Amazon driver who brought it in the first place…

But, he adds, Amazon must tread lightly. For now, the company depends intensely on UPS and FedEx to make its business work. At the moment, Amazon can’t make them angry. It’s telling that a day after Bezos revealed Amazon’s flying drone ambitions on 60 Minutes, which would also be a form of direct shipping, news leaked of UPS’ own drone plans, as if the delivery company was saying: “Don’t test us.”

Companies like Amazon like having control over the whole process for several reasons. One is that everything is then under their control. (Except the production of products which still have to be designed, made, and placed in Amazon distribution centers.) From beginning to end, they can set quality standards and track information. The other important part of this is cost and I’m a little surprised Agarwal doesn’t say anything about this. One appealing aspect of drones is that they remove the need to have people involved with the delivery of packages. In contrast, trucks require drivers and maintaining equipment. (This also doesn’t account for the need for Amazon, companies, and taxpayers to also support and pay for roads.) Could Amazon do trucking cheaper?

Maybe Amazon doesn’t care. Compared to other companies, Amazon seems relatively unconcerned about its profits. For example, see this opinion piece on “Why Amazon is a Lousy Business:”

Unfortunately, it’s not a great business.  According to Yahoo Finance, the company earned only a slim 1% operating margin during the last 2 years and a not particularly impressive 4% margin in 2010.  While there’s more to a business than just the bottom line, those are worrying numbers.

Jeff Bezos insists that he can turn on the earnings spigot any time he wants and is merely plowing money back in order to grow the business, but that seems thin to me.  Last year Amazon grew its top line 27%, very good, but not unusual for a technology company (Google, for comparison, grew 32%).

Drones, trucks, or otherwise, Amazon will have some choices about how to proceed with deliveries.

One new Miami building will “Be Home to Nearly 2 Percent of the World’s Billionaires”

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There are wealthy buildings and then there are ultra-wealthy buildings like this new condo tower in Miami:

Twenty-two billionaires—just shy of two percent of the world’s total—have purchased units in a condominium tower being built in Sunny Isles Beach, a small city in Miami-Dade County. The 60-story Porsche Design Tower features the normal super-rich perks, including units as large as 17,000 square feet, and swimming pool- and kitchen-equipped balconies as large as 1,600 square feet.

But the real draw is hinted at in the name: The Porsche Design Tower features three car elevators that will take residents and their rides directly to their units, where they can park their car in a glass garage adjoined to their residences (two-car garages for the “cheaper” units, four-car garages for the pricier ones). This feature allows car-obsessives to stare at their super expensive cars from their high-rise living rooms.

The tower, which broke ground in April 2013 and secured a massive construction loan in October, is the brainchild of car enthusiast and condo magnate Gil Dezer and Germany’s Porsche Design Group. As of mid-October, Dezer had sold almost 100 of the tower’s 132 units, the prices for which range from $4.2 million to $32 million. He reportedly spent part of November selling the remaining units at a gathering for Bugatti owners. There will be 284 robotic parking spaces in all. This is automated parking taken to the next level.

I know most of the buyers would rather not reveal that they live in this building but doesn’t this lift the profile of a new building?

The car elevator is pretty cool but I would also be interested in seeing how exactly this building interacts with the surrounding area. If you have this many wealthy residents, you don’t want normal people walking up or being anywhere near. Indeed, how could you construct entry and exit points so that people can’t simply wait for the wealthy to drive in and out? Leaving the transportation to cars leads to possible problems – and flying helicopters off the top of the building would help.

I can only imagine what the security will be here…

Chicago area highway drivers going faster: 85th percentile between 71 and 75 mph

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A new report highlights the fast highway driving along Chicago area highways:

Only a few are obeying the law. In those stretches, an average of 1 out of 20 motorists drives at or below that limit…

The data, gathered in April, May and September, showed that, depending on which tollway stretch was tested, 91 to 98 percent of drivers exceeded the 55 mph speed limit. In those stretches, the average speed ranged from 66 to 70 mph.

The studies followed a 2012 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report that showed that average highway speeds increased to almost 71 mph in 2009 from 65 mph two years earlier. At the same time, traffic fatalities — 33,561 last year — are dropping, except for a slight increase in 2012. The report concluded that the higher speeds might have been the product of less speed enforcement in 2009 and fewer cars on the road that year, leading to less congestion…

But perhaps the most fundamental metric in deciding where to set a speed limit is a concept known as the 85th percentile, or the speed at which 85 percent of drivers are either traveling at, or below. In essence, it measures the limit that most drivers place on themselves, regardless of posted speed limits.

Tollway data showed that the 85th percentile speed ranges from 71 to 75 mph.

Read on for more discussion of then how Illinois might or might not increase speed limits.

I’ve talked to numerous people over the years who are nervous about driving in the Chicago area because of these speeds. On one trip that involved driving through the Chicago region, I was asked to drive since I was used to it. While the speed is one factor, I wonder how much the overall traffic, particularly the large trucks, matter. It is one thing to drive fast in more open spaces – Michigan, for example, has had 70 mph speed limits for at least several years but it often doesn’t feel as bad with less people around. It is another thing to have at least three lanes and often four in each direction full of drivers of different sizes and speeds.

One thought: if we end up with a world of driverless cars in a few years, what speed would these cars travel on a highway? Presumably, the cars could go faster because the cars would share information and maximize the speed. But what then would be considered “safe”?

Anger directed at urban cyclists and city bike lanes really about fears that younger Americans don’t want sprawling suburbs?

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Complaints about urban biking and new bike lanes might be less about biking and more about what younger Americans don’t want: the sprawling suburbs.

All this sounds like a nightmare scenario if you live in the suburbs. Gas prices rise and housing prices fall, eating into liquid capital and equity. Families with the ability to move return back to the city, depressing housing prices even further. Declining property tax revenues and a fleeing upper-middle-class undermine previously excellent schools. At best, suburbanites take a huge hit on depreciating houses; at worst, they’re stranded in decaying neighborhoods, cut off by isolating new infrastructure…That’s where I see an undercurrent of Millennial resentment (we’ll spot Kass a decade or so on “grunge;” when you’re out across the county line, the news travels slower). The boomers escaped cities in decline, investing sweat equity earned in office parks into a house and two cars, the gas taxes they paid into epic interchanges, and their high property taxes into excellent schools.

And the little bastards who went to those excellent schools don’t want that inheritance. They want to ride their car shares from their rented apartments to mass transit, making the last-mile commute on shared bikes (they don’t even own bikes!) to virtual startups in work-share spaces.

From the perspective of postwar America, it looks like a whole lot of nothing, an unsettled and rootless future. Where they’re going, they don’t need… roads…

But it’s the future we’re being promised by a lot of people in position to make it happen, who threaten to reverse—to invert—what their parents spent a lifetime building. It’s scary, and not just on a merely economic level. And the people out there who are so angry about it aren’t just trying to outrun a few three-speed, step-through shared bikes; they’re trying to outrun the future, and you’re in the way.

Moser is arguing the bike lanes are just a sign of bigger trends at work, as suggested in books like The Great Inversion and The End of the Suburbs. This is really about a changed way of life, a different way of thinking about the American Dream, trading suburban spaces for new iPhones and exciting urban experiences the creative class desires. I think Moser is right to be skeptical; these changes will take time as well as a lot of collective action. At the same time, there is a lot of conversation about denser suburbs and returning to cities. Of course, this doesn’t mean such moves solve all the problems; there are still plenty of poor urban neighborhoods and suburbs that are left behind in the movement of what might be largely middle- to upper-class residents who can afford these changes.

How much irony is there here that the suburbs might have actually provided the “unsettled and rootless future” that younger Americans may now not want? Think about classic suburban critiques like American Beauty or the Arcade Fire album The Suburbs. The suburbs were viewed by many as the places to escape the problems of the city – everything from corrupt morality, dirtiness (factories, pollution, horses in the street everywhere, etc.), new populations – and yet the suburbs clearly have their own problems.

American driving habits peaked in 2004-2005, before the recession

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Check out a number of charts about American driving habits and they tend to agree: the amount of driving and gas consumption plateaued or declined starting in 2004-2005.

So, technically speaking, the two-car garage is no longer average. Realistically speaking, plenty of suburban households have a pair of Explorers or Civics sitting in their driveways. And thanks to population growth, the total number of vehicles on the road has started rising again.  (So no need to shed tears for Detroit, yet.) But, in the end, individual families aren’t buying quite so many vehicles as a few years ago…

Americans are also spending far less time in the cars they do own. The average U.S. driver traveled 12,492 miles in 2011, down about 1,200 miles, or 9 percent, from our mid-aughts peak…

Lower mileage, along with more fuel-efficient vehicles, has in turn slashed our fuel consumption. Collectively, we haven’t pumped this little gas since the 1990s…

All of these changes have something intriguing in common: They started well before the financial crisis and recession. The number of cars per household peaked in 2005. Miles-per-driver peaked in 2004, as so did gas use. Which is to say, as Sivak does, that it would be silly to pin these changes entirely on the downturn.

Of course, there are still plenty of cars on the roads and lots of driving, particularly due to population growth. But, in terms of individual habits, driving has decreased as has gas consumption. Three quick questions:

1. Is this a good thing for environmentalists and those opposed to sprawl? One way to think about this is to ask whether the individual-level declines are enough to offset the still-increasing number of cars due to more people.

2. For policy makers, is it better to pursue better gas mileage or getting more cars off the roads in the first place? To put it another way, is the enemy just gas guzzlers like pick-up trucks and SUVs or is the problem all cars? The second option is less popular though both could be pursued: think stricter gas mileage standards for cars and promoting more New Urbanist and dense development.

3. Just how much decline might we expect in the future? It is one thing to cut back on driving but most Americans can’t get rid of it all together or even cut it in half by fifty percent.

Should all suburban teeangers want to experience the big city?

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A Hollywood actor who grew up in Naperville argues suburban kids should want to explore the big city:

Right there on Wikipedia, Odenkirk said that he grew up “hating” Naperville because “it felt like a dead end, like Nowheresville. I couldn’t wait to move into a city and be around people who were doing exciting things.”

We contacted the co-star of the hit TV series “Breaking Bad” (he plays sleazy attorney Saul Goodman) and Alexander Payne’s critically acclaimed domestic drama “Nebraska,” opening Nov. 22, and asked for an explanation for this unabashed Naperville bashing.

“Well, you have to remember I was 16 years old when I was in Naperville,” said Odenkirk, 51. “I felt like I was offstage when I wanted to be onstage. I felt like I was watching from afar all the people who were movers and shakers, the people who were living exciting existences. That’s what I wanted to do.”…

“I didn’t want to be in the suburbs when I was 16 and 17 and 18,” Odenkirk continued. “I couldn’t wait to get out and go to Chicago or some other big city. New York intimidated me. Frankly, Chicago intimidated me, but I wanted to be there! Come on! Doesn’t every teenager feel that way?”…

“I would worry if my teenagers said they liked (the suburbs), that they didn’t want to experience the big city.”

One of the critiques of American suburbs involves their lack of opportunities for teenagers. This can take several forms. One issue is with urban design. In spaces designed around cars, if you can’t drive, you are in trouble. Similarly, if you live in isolated residential neighborhoods that are not close to important areas, like school or shops or parks or friends, teenagers can’t go very far. A second issue is with the suburban mindset that tends to focus attention on the local level. The complaint here is that teenagers aren’t exposed much to the wider world, to interactions with people much different from themselves.

Cities offer solutions to both issues: there is a variety of mass transit option in many big cities and walking or biking can actually get you to somewhere interesting. They also tend to contain more diverse populations and opportunities compared to suburbs. Yet, the perception is that cities are not as safe for children/teenagers and this might limit their ability to explore big cities.

All that said, compared to other suburbs, Naperville has the sort of factors that can help make suburbs more exciting for teenagers – a lively downtown with restaurants, stores, and the Riverwalk; good schools; plenty of recreational activities and learning opportunities (good libraries); a growing non-white population. So, if it doesn’t appeal to teenagers, what suburb does? (Note: Odenkirk was 16 in 1978 Naperville, a time when the community was growing but didn’t necessarily have all of the amenities it does today.)

It is easy to eavesdrop on conversations while on mass transit

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A writer highlights how easy it is to overhear conversations on mass transit:

On Amtrak, powerful people talk loudly and spill secrets.

This is my conclusion based on five years’ field research commuting on Amtrak’s Acela between cities along the East Coast.

By now, you’ve heard about former NSA director Michael Hayden, who on Thursday talked nonstop to a reporter—on background—as the train went north from Washington, D.C. toward New York City. A few seats behind Hayden was Tom Matzzie, former Washington director of political group MoveOn.org, who started live-tweeting his eavesdropping…

As someone who rides the Acela two to three times a week, I can tell you that what Hayden and Matzzie each did—talking loud and tweeting louder—isn’t unusual. In fact, private conversations are so often broadcast across the train car that it’s become fertile ground for competitive intelligence gathering, business development or, as in Matzzie’s case, gaining a whole bunch of new social media followers.

While it may be relatively easy to hear on Amtrak trains, this is also not hard on subways, buses, and other trains. There are plenty of people who talk loudly, particularly on cell phones. I wonder if the best way to stop such loud conversations is to tell people their safety (or even national security!) is at risk – the people around them could learn a lot and then harm them down the road.

Webb argues at the end that most people listening to these public conversations are “accidental spies,” people who would prefer not to hear. However, isn’t this part of participating in public spaces? One doesn’t have to go so far as to strain to hear what people are saying to analyze and/or enjoy human conversation. Why not listen to the lives of others? Doing so can be a lot more interesting than “reality TV” that is heavily edited and scripted.

A final thought: I wonder how many people read this commentary and then think how nice it is to drive themselves to work and elsewhere. No nosy people nearby then, particularly if you have tinted glass…

h/t Instapundit

Oregon to adopt driving tax by miles driven on volunteer basis in 2015

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Oregon is moving ahead with plans to institute a miles driven tax rather than a gasoline tax:

The program, springing out of a recently signed bill, is expected to launch in 2015 on a volunteer basis. But it’s charting relatively new territory, and other states aching for additional tax revenue are sure to be watching closely to see whether to imitate the model…

Oregon is purportedly considering several tracking methods for the pilot project’s 5,000 volunteers ahead of the 2015 start date – essentially allowing them to install mileage meters connected their vehicles’ odometers or GPS systems that could better track non-taxable miles on private and out-of-state roads…

A state spokeswoman said Monday that the project is still in the development stages with officials focused on public awareness, not registration.

Still, she acknowledge residents with electric cars, who pay no gas taxes, “won’t be running to sign up.”

As the article suggests, this is likely to be unpopular for a number of reasons including cost and privacy. However, I haven’t seen any other proposals for how to continue to maintain roads if cars continue to be more fuel efficient. Another option would be to raise the gas tax but no one would like that either. The roads have to be paid for somehow.

Perhaps the key would be to show people that they would be paying a similar amount through the gas tax or the miles driven tax. If the numbers are comparable for many people, it is just replacing one tax with another rather than adding on a new tax. But, the two taxes are based on two different things.

Study: self-driving cars would be expensive but would save lots of lives, money down the road

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A new study suggests self-driving cars would have a lot of benefits:

If 90 percent of vehicles were self-driving, as many as 21,700 lives per year could be saved, and economic and other benefits could reach a staggering $447 billion, said the study, a copy of which was provided to The Associated Press…

For example, the passenger compartment may be transformed as former drivers safely work on laptops, eat meals, read books, watch movies and call friends. And cars that can be programmed to pick up people, drive them to their destination and then park by themselves may change the lives of the elderly and disabled by providing critical mobility.

Once a critical mass of self-driving cars is on the road, they can start “platooning” — driving closely together but keeping a steady distance between each other without the fuel-burning, time-wasting, stop-and-go typical of traffic congestion. That could smooth traffic flows, reduce commute times and increase highway capacity.

Government research indicates driver error is likely the main reason behind over 90 percent of all crashes. Over 40 percent of fatal traffic crashes involve alcohol, distraction, drugs or fatigue. But self-driven vehicles wouldn’t fall prey to such human failings, suggesting the potential for at least a 40 percent reduction in fatal crashes, the study said.

Who doesn’t like safety, saving money, and reducing the stress of driving? If more companies produce such cars and they become legal as well as widely accepted, it will be interesting to see how quickly prices might drop.

I wonder at the efficacy of self-driving cars if they only constitute a small number of cars. While they would still allow drivers to do other things in the car, they wouldn’t quite be as safe until a majority of cars are self-driving. It seems like the benefits rise at a steep curve: a few self-driving cars won’t help much but having 90% self-driving cars would be transformational.

I also am curious to know whether there would be people who would oppose self-driving cars because they can perpetuate car culture in the United States. If peak oil is not near and self-driving cars make driving safer and easier, might Americans have cars for centuries?