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Nashville is one of a growing number of US cities that are allowing tent encampments. Services provided by the city or volunteers include portable toilets, garbage pickup, medical vans, firewood delivery, and security guards. (WSJ)
Good Magazine sent a photographer down to Nashville’s Tent City to record the daily lives of residents. The settlement lies under a freeway, on land owned by the TN DOT. Sample pic above. (Good)
Economist Edward Glaeser continues his series on rail investment. After lengthy calculations, he concludes: Passenger rail prevents carbon emissions and saves lives, but the benefits are “quite small relative the cost of the system.” (Economix)
What state’s residents spend the most on gas? If you said Mississippi–more than 9% of personal income–please place a gold star on your forehead. And what state spends the least? Connecticut, at 3%–because it’s little and lots of hedge fund managers live there. See a full 50-state map after the jump. (NRDC)
On the oil front, Mexico has long been one of the top exporters to the US. But recently production has been plunging and the state oil company expects that trend will continue for a while, dropping another 5% this year. (Bloomberg)
Matt Yglesias floats the idea that perhaps city streets have too many lanes and signs and rules and stuff. The best and safest approach might be streets as an “undifferentiated stretch on which cars, bikes, pedestrians, etc. are all free to travel. The over-arching ‘rule’ would be ‘don’t collide with anyone.’” (Think Progress)
August 12th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
That gas spending stat is interesting, because Connecticut has some of the highest gas prices in the nation. Maybe the fact that so many Connecticut residents work in New York City and commute in by train has something to do with it.
August 12th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Oh, it’s “percent of income.” Well, there you go. Connecticut is rich, and Mississippi is poor.
August 12th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Yeah, they break it out by actual dollar amounts too at the NRDC site. There are obvs many factors at play here, but it is interesting how the richest state came out on top and the poorest on bottom.
August 12th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
The report focussed on strategies for reducing the numerator (gasoline costs) by adopting policies that boost vehicle efficiency, push gasoline alternatives and provide more mobility alternatives such as public transportation. AND it is of course true that changing the denominator (average income) would also reduce the burden on households. NRDC is certainly not opposed to income-enhancing policies.
August 12th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I find the overall NRDC numbers themselves most striking: that the average American driver spent something like $2000 or a full 5.5% of their income in 2008 on gas. The 2006 figures are around $1400 or 4% of income. It isn’t hard to see just how soon it will get too painful for car-dependent America.
As a percentage of income, Mississippi’s gas use went up by 60% from 2006 to 2008! (And 44%, or a cool $1000 in absolute terms.) According to Wikipedia, in Jackson, MS, “JATRAN (Jackson Transit System) operates hourly or half-hourly during daytime hours on weekdays, and mostly hourly on Saturdays. No evening or Sunday service is operated.” I can’t imagine that lasting much longer.
August 13th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
People are burning staggering amounts of fuel. These are the kind of numbers that have me computing how many hours a day are required to burn that much. Take the bike to work one day and you’ll have to spend extra time in the car the next to burn enough fuel to make up for it.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:06 am
@Beige: “have to” … for some people, that’d be take a bike to work one day to be ABLE to spend extra time in the car next week, like for that trip down to the state park for the music festival.