The Path to Recovery

http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/the-future-of-the-city/archive/2010/05/the-path-to-recovery/56393/

The Path to Recovery
May 7 2010
Richard Florida

Economic peaks and valleys are part of the life cycle of any society. They can be difficult, sometimes horribly painful, but just as trees shed their leaves in the fall to make room for the new growth of spring, economies reset themselves. Times of crisis reveal what is and isn't working. These are the times when obsolete and dysfunctional systems and practices collapse or fall by the wayside. They are the times when the seeds of innovation and invention, of creativity and entrepreneurship, burst into full flower, enabling recovery by remaking both the economy and society. Major periods of economic transformation, such as the Great Depression or the Long Depression of the 1870s before it, unfold over long stretches of time, like motion pictures rather than snapshots. Likewise, the path to recovery can be long and twisted--the better part of three decades in the case of those two previous crises. Seen in the greater context of history, economic crises inevitably give rise to critical periods in which an economy is remade in ways that allow it to recover and begin growing again. These are periods I call Great Resets.

We're still very early on in the current economic Reset, so it's difficult to fully grasp how it will ultimately play out. But we can all sense that our way of life is changing and our economic landscape is too. This emerging new way of life will be less oriented around cars, houses, and suburbs. We'll be spending relatively less on the things that defined the old way of life. We'll have to, if we expect to have money left over to sustain the new industries that will emerge in the Great Reset and usher in an age of renewed prosperity. Before we can nurture the new industries of the future, develop new forms of health care and biotechnologies, or even explore new forms of education or more experiential forms of entertainment and recreation, we first have to free up capital by producing the goods of the old industrial order more cheaply and efficiently.

We've reached the limits of what George W. Bush used to call the "ownership society." Owning your own home made sense when people could hope to hold a job for most or all of their lives. But in an economy that revolves around mobility and flexibility, a house that can't be sold becomes an economic trap, preventing people from moving freely to economic opportunity. Not only has that piece of the American Dream grown dark, but it's also clear that financial excess in the housing sector was one of the central causes of the economic crisis. Housing sucked up far too much of the nation's and the world's capital, and too many people--already overextended by the purchase of outsized houses--used those homes like virtual ATMs to finance carefree consumption. Every Great Reset has seen our system of housing change, and this one is no different. The rate of home ownership has been on the decline for some time now. Many of those who still choose to buy homes will choose smaller ones, while many more will opt for rental housing.

Our new way of life is likely to depend a whole lot less on the car. In October 2009, The New York Times reported, "The recession and a growing awareness of the environment are causing many people to reassess their automobile ownership. After more than a century in which an automobile represented the American dream, car enthusiasm may no longer be a part of Americans' DNA." Car culture no longer exerts the powerful pull it once did. More and more families are deciding to share cars, and young people are putting off buying them and using public transit, bikes, their feet or Zipcars (membership-based, easy-access short-term car rentals) instead. It's not just that oil and gas have become expensive, it's that traffic and gridlock have become a deadweight time cost on us and our economy.

One constant in the history of capitalism is the ever-more-intensive use of land, as mercantile towns replaced agricultural villages, major industrial cities replaced those towns, and massive complexes of suburbs, exurbs, and edge cites expanded the boundaries of those cities. The change we are living through is much more than a movement from suburbs to denser urban communities. What we are seeing is the rise of a new, bigger, and denser economic landscape than ever before--the rise of vast megaregions such as the corridors stretching from Boston to New York and Washington, D.C., around greater London, and from Shanghai to Beijing. These concentrations of population, which encompass several cities and their surrounding suburban rings, have grown swiftly in recent years.

The largest megaregion in North America is the great "Bos-Wash" corridor, initially identified by the geographer Jean Gottmann. Strecthing down the East Coast, it includes Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., and is home to more than 50 million people while producing more than $2 trillion in economic activity. Its economic output is greater than that of either the United Kingdom or France and more than double that of India or Canada. The second biggest, which Gottman dubbed "Chi-Pitts," covers more than 100,000 square miles and is home to 46 million people, producing $1.6 trillion in economic output. Other megaregions in North America include:

•Char-lanta: Atlanta, Charlotte, and Raleigh-Durham, 22 million people
•So-Cal: Around Los Angeles, 21 million people
•Tor-Mon-tawa: 22 million people
•Nor-Cal: Around San Francisco, 12.8 million people
•So-Flo: Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, 15 million people
•Dal-Austin: Dallas and Austin, 10 million people
•Hou-Orleans: Houston and New Orleans, 9.7 million people
•Cascadia: Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, 9 million people
•Pho-Tus: Phoenix and Tucson, 4.7 million people
•Den-Bo: Denver and Boulder, 3.7 million people

Around the world, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Mumbai are hubs of giant megaregions. Each of these is a financial and commercial center with tens of millions of people and hundreds of billions of dollars in output.

These megaregions, not nations, really power the global economy. Taken together, the world's 40 largest megaregions account for two-thirds of all global economic activity and 85 percent of the world's technological innovation while housing just 18 percent of its population. Megaregions are the strategic power centers of the economy, housing 85 percent of all corporate headquarters in the United States and Canada.

Though many analysts have predicted that the importance of cities--and that of location--would fade with globalization, the reality is that cities and megaregions have become more important economically than ever before. Even as globalization has spread factories, businesses, and laboratories to places such as India, China, Brazil, and beyond, these activities are being concentrated in the megaregions of those countries. Contrary to the notion that the world is flat, the most successful megaregions, in fact, are becoming economically stronger and spikier, not flatter.

Megaregions are to our time what suburbanization was to the postwar era. They provide the seeds of a new spatial fix. They expand and intensify our use of land and space the way that the industrial city did during the First Reset and suburbia did in the Second. As people pour into the world's great megaregions, inner cities and close-in suburbs are being reclaimed and rebuilt. Older suburbs, especially those on transit routes, are being reorganized and rebuilt into denser communities offering more condos and town houses as well as single-family homes. Suburban malls and office complexes are being retrofitted and turned into walkable areas with a mixture of housing, shops, and restaurants and in some cases even new parks. Subways and rail transit are being expanded as highways clog.

The location decisions made by new college grads have interested me for years. Their choices involve evaluating not just the company they'll work for but the labor market it's located in and what the surrounding area has to offer. Because they are both highly skilled and highly mobile--three to five times as likely to move than, say, a 45-year-old--the decisions they make about where to live are likely to leave a lasting imprint on our economic geography.

To get at the factors that attract and keep young Gen Y members, those born between the years 1979 and 1990, in certain places, my colleague Charlotta Mellander and I analyzed the results of a Gallup survey of some 28,000 Americans. Jobs are clearly important. Gen Y members ranked the availability of jobs second when asked what would keep them in their current location and fourth in terms of their overall satisfaction with their community. From this perspective, big cities make sense for them, as they offer more robust labor markets with more and better job opportunities in a wide number of fields. In an age in which corporate commitment has dwindled, job tenure has grown far shorter, and people switch jobs with much greater frequency, career success involves a great deal more than simply finding the right first job. In these highly mobile and economically tumultuous times, career success for young people depends on locating themselves in a thick labor market that offers diverse and abundant job opportunities. Picking an economically vibrant location is an important hedge against economic uncertainty and the risk of layoff.

But remember that jobs were not the highest-ranked factor. Across the board, the survey respondents said that the ability to meet people and make friends was of paramount importance. These young people intuitively understand what economic sociologists have documented: that vibrant social networks are key to landing jobs, moving forward in your career, and securing personal happiness. They not only desire a thick labor market but also seek what I have come to call a thick mating market, where they can meet new people, go out on dates, and eventually find a life partner. And whereas older Americans see high-quality schools and safe streets for their children as key, Gen Y understandably ranks the availability of outstanding colleges and universities higher. Many are likely to go back to graduate school and want to have good programs nearby. For all these reasons, big cities at the heart of megaregions top the list of their choices.

The auto-dependent transportation system has reached its limit in most major cities and megaregions. Commuting by car is among the least efficient of all our activities--not to mention among the least enjoyable, according to detailed research by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues. Though one might think that the crisis would have reduced traffic (high unemployment means fewer workers traveling to and from work), the opposite has been true. Average commutes have lengthened, and congestion has gotten worse, if anything. The average commute rose in 2008 to 25.5 minutes, "erasing years of decreases to stand at the level of 2000, as people had to leave home earlier in the morning to pick up friends for their ride to work or to catch a bus or subway train," according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which collects the figures. And those are average figures. Commutes are far longer in the big West Coast cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco and the East Coast cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. In many of these cities, gridlock has become the norm, not just at rush hour but all day, every day.

Just about the only remedy for traffic congestion anyone ever suggests is building more roads and highways, which of course only makes the problem worse. New roads generate higher levels of "induced traffic," that is, new roads just invite drivers to drive more and lure people who take mass transit back to their cars. Eventually, we end up with more clogged roads rather than a long-term improvement in traffic flow

More and more people are choosing to take the subway, train, or bus or even walk or bike to work and go about their daily business--providing they live in an environment that allows for such choices. In Manhattan, 82 percent of workers get to work by public transit or bicycle or on foot. That's ten times the rate for Americans in general, eight times the rate for workers in Los Angeles County, and 16 times the rate for residents of metropolitan Atlanta. The New York City subway is a remarkably effective technology for moving masses of people around quickly and efficiently. Between 8 and 9 in the morning on a typical workday, more than 385,000 people use its subway system to commute into the central business district.

New York is not the only place where this kind of change in commuting and local traffic patterns is occurring. In Washington, D.C., 57 percent of commuters get to work by means other than driving a car--more than a third take public transit, 12 percent walk to work, and 2 percent ride their bikes; just four in ten drive to work alone. In Boston and San Francisco, roughly half of workers get to work without their cars--roughly a third of commuters take transit, and 10 to 15 percent walk to work. In Philadelphia, 41 percent commute without cars and 27 percent take transit.

These numbers may seem like a drop in the bucket. But 60 percent of Americans surveyed in 2005 said they want to live in walkable communities with shops, restaurants, movie theaters, schools, and churches nearby. We're already seeing the shift as increasing numbers of people move to walkable communities closer to where they work. That will clearly expand in coming decades.

For the time being, most Americans remain behind the wheel. Today, more than three-quarters of Americans drive to work alone. They have no other choice. There are, however, other things we can do to ease congestion and take more cars off the road. Employers can offer more flexible schedules and the ability to work from home or telecommute. But as we've already seen, in many cities traffic is not just a rush-hour problem. The only alternative left is to price the roads. We pay for everything else: we pay to take the subway, ride the bus, or take the train, we pay to drive through the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels or over the George Washington Bridge. Why should the roads be essentially free? If we want to make traffic better, we have little choice other than to make people pay for the roads they drive on.

Richard Florida is director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. Adapted from THE GREAT RESET: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida. Copyright 2010 by Richard Florida. Reprinted by arrangement with Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Eccentric Couple Live in Spaceship-Style House

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/eccentric_couple_live_in_spaceship-style_house/

Eccentric Couple Live in Spaceship-Style House
08.15.2009
Tara McGinley

Hiran Ratnayake from Delawareonline.com wrote: “Towns have passed laws to deal with it and numerous gadgets have been developed to protect from it. But few have taken their hatred for noise as far as Houston’s Barney Vincelette.

A case of mild autism has made him extremely sensitive to noise. Vincelette, who lives in a spaceship-style house, thinks music, especially top 40, rap and rock ‘n’ roll, ‘sounds the same way feces smells.’

Vincelette used his genius-level IQ and parts of household microwave ovens to develop a makeshift device that uses electromagnetic waves to temporarily jam the circuitry of his neighbors’ stereos.

Barney Vincelette purchased his unusual house from a catalog and erected it on his Houston lot. While he revels in its ‘geometric simplicity,’ his wife, Carol, says it doesn’t have enough space.”

Indianapolis lands 2012 Super Bowl

http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=414004

Indianapolis lands 2012 Super Bowl
May 20, 2008
Sporting News staff reports

The Indianapolis Colts will have home-field advantage should they make it into Super Bowl 46.

Overshadowed by the labor vote, NFL owners also voted Tuesday to grant the 2012 Super Bowl -- if there's no work stoppage -- to Indianapolis. Arizona and Houston were the other finalists in a competition that usually goes to warm-weather cities. The next two Super Bowls are in Tampa and in South Florida.

Indianapolis narrowly lost a bid last May to host the 2011 Super Bowl. Indianapolis will be the fourth Super Bowl in a cold-weather city. Detroit has hosted two Super Bowls, and Minneapolis has hosted one.

Part of the Indianapolis' bid includes a pledge by the city to build a practice facility downtown that will be left in place for local residents to use.

Associated Press contributed to this report

Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/22wireless.html

March 22, 2008
Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out
By IAN URBINA

PHILADELPHIA — It was hailed as Internet for the masses when Philadelphia officials announced plans in 2005 to erect the largest municipal Wi-Fi grid in the country, stretching wireless access over 135 square miles with the hope of bringing free or low-cost service to all residents, especially the poor.

Municipal officials in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and 10 other major cities, as well as dozens of smaller towns, quickly said they would match Philadelphia’s plans.

But the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. The conclusion that such ventures would not be profitable led to sudden withdrawals by service providers like EarthLink, the Internet company that had effectively cornered the market on the efforts by the larger cities.

Now, community organizations worry about their prospects for helping poor neighborhoods get online.

In Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity.

“All these cities had this hype hangover late last year when EarthLink announced its intentions to pull out,” said Craig Settles, an independent wireless consultant and author of “Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless” (Hudson Publishing, 2006). “Now that they’re all sobered up, they’re trying to figure out if it’s still possible to capture the dream of providing affordable and high-speed access to all residents.”

EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that “the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company’s strategic direction.” Philadelphia officials say they are not sure when or if the promised network will now be completed.

For Cesar DeLaRosa, 15, however, the concern is more specific. He said he was worried about his science project on global warming.

“If we don’t have Internet, that means I’ve got to take the bus to the public library after dark, and around here, that’s not always real safe,” Cesar said, seated in front of his family’s new computer in a gritty section of Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. His family is among the 1,000 or so low-income households that now have free or discounted Wi-Fi access through the city’s project, and many of them worry about losing access that they cannot otherwise afford.

Philadelphia officials say service will not be disconnected.

“We expect EarthLink to live up to its contract,” said Terry Phillis, the city’s chief information officer.

But when City Council leaders here held a hearing in December to question EarthLink about how it intended to keep service running and complete the planned network, the company failed to show up.

Officials in Chicago, Houston, Miami and San Francisco find themselves in a similar predicament with EarthLink and other service providers, and have all temporarily tabled their projects.

Part of the problem was in the business model established in Philadelphia and mimicked in so many other cities, Mr. Settles said.

In Philadelphia, the agreement was that the city would provide free access to city utility poles for the mounting of routers; in return the Internet service provider would agree to build the infrastructure for 23 free hotspots and to provide inexpensive citywide residential service, including 25,000 special accounts that were even cheaper for lower-income households.

But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks. Marketing was also slow to begin, so paid subscribers did not sign up in the numbers that providers initially hoped, Mr. Phillis said.

Prices for Internet service on the broader market also began dropping to a level that, while above what many poor people could afford, was below what municipal Wi-Fi providers were offering, so the companies had to lower their rates even further, making investment in infrastructure even more risky, he said.

EarthLink, which has seen a recent decline in profits and subscribers, lost its chief executive, Garry Betty, to cancer in January 2007, and with him went one of the nation’s most vocal advocates of municipal Wi-Fi. Mr. Betty’s successor, Rolla P. Huff, announced plans to cut costs and move the company in a new direction by laying off about 900 workers, about half the company’s work force, and withdrawing from municipal wireless projects.

Chris Marshall, an EarthLink spokesman who declined to be interviewed, said in an e-mail statement, “We concluded that our Municipal Wi-Fi operation is not consistent with our strategic direction and we’ve committed to a plan to sell the Muni Wi-Fi assets.”

For San Francisco residents, EarthLink’s change of plans was an especially big letdown. Unlike most other cities where municipal wireless was going to be offered in free hotspots and at a reduced price for residential service, San Francisco planned to offer citywide wireless free in a three-way deal with EarthLink, which was to build the grid, and Google, which would have paid to advertise through the network.

“It was a huge disappointment for us,” Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco said about EarthLink’s shift in course, “and, with all due respect, it doesn’t seem like a smart way to run a business to work with a city for two years over a major plan and then suddenly one day to call and say you are pulling out.”

Mr. Newsom said that rather than select a single Internet provider to blanket the city, he might team up with multiple nonprofits and companies, and set up smaller free Wi-Fi areas, especially in poor neighborhoods.

Smaller cities, too, have run into problems with municipal wireless efforts.

Tempe, for instance, was one of the first midsize cities in the nation to go live in 2006 with its municipal wireless network, after erecting about 900 routers on utility poles and contracting with Gobility, a Texas-based provider, for residential service at about $20 per month. In December, the company suddenly pulled service after failing to get enough subscribers.

“The entire for-profit model is the reason for the collapse in all these projects,” said Sascha Meinrath, technology analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

Mr. Meinrath said that advocates wanted to see American cities catch up with places like Athens, Leipzig and Vienna, where free citywide Wi-Fi is already available.

He said that true municipal networks, the ones that are owned and operated by municipalities, were far more sustainable because they could take into account benefits that help cities beyond private profit, including property-value increases, education benefits and quality-of-life improvements that come with offering residents free wireless access.

Mr. Meinrath pointed to St. Cloud, Fla., which spent $3 million two years ago to build a free wireless network that is used by more than 70 percent of the households in the city.

But projects covering larger cities have proved far more difficult to sustain financially, and much of the attention has turned now to Minneapolis, which is rolling out a network based on a new business model that many market analysts believe will avoid the financial risks that EarthLink encountered in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

In Minneapolis, the Internet service provider agreed to build the network as long as the city committed to becoming an “anchor tenant” by subscribing for a minimum number of city workers, like building inspectors, meter readers, police officers and firefighters.

This type of plan is more viable, according to market analysts and city officials, because the companies paying to mount the routers and run the service are guaranteed a base number of subscribers to cover the cost of their investment.

Some companies have also begun offering technological alternatives that may help expand wireless access.

Meraki, a wireless networking company based in Mountain View, Calif., has jumped into the void in San Francisco with a program it calls “Free the Net.” The company sells low-cost equipment that can be placed in a person’s home to broadcast a wireless signal. The company also sells inexpensive repeaters that can be placed on rooftops or outside walls to spread the original customer’s signal farther. The combination of the two types of equipment creates a mesh of free wireless in neighborhoods. The company says it has almost 70,000 users throughout San Francisco.

Back in Philadelphia, Cesar’s older sister, Tomasa DeLaRosa, said she had faith that city officials would find a way to finish the network and keep her Internet service going.

“Our whole house is totally different now,” said Ms. DeLaRosa, 19, who had never had Internet access at home until last December because she could not afford it.

After signing up for a job training program and completing its course work, Ms. DeLaRosa received a free laptop, training and a year’s worth of free wireless service from Esparanza, a community group.

Greg Goldman, chief executive of Wireless Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization that was set up as part of the city’s deal with EarthLink, said that about $20 million had already been spent on the network, and only about $4 million more would be needed to cover the rest of the city.

Mr. Goldman’s organization is responsible for providing bundles that include a free laptop, Internet access, training and technical support to organizations like Esparanza so they can use them as incentives for their low-income clients like Ms. DeLaRosa to complete job training and other programs.

“For us and a lot of people in this neighborhood,” Ms. DeLaRosa said, “the Internet is like a path out of here.”

Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas in the U.S.

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/103987/Most-Expensive-Places-to-Buy-Gas-in-the-U.S.

Monday, December 10, 2007
Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas in the U.S.
by Matt Woolsey
Saturday, December 1, 2007

Drivers in San Francisco enjoy views of the Golden Gate Bridge, with scenic stretches of the Pacific Coast Highway to the south and the rural shoreline to the north.

And they pay for it at the pump.

There, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.546 Wednesday, up from $2.524 a year ago.

San Francisco, Calif.

Things don't look much better in other parts of the state. San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles posted the country's next-highest per-gallon prices, respectively, according to Gasbuddy.com, a Web site that tracks gas prices nationwide.

Such high prices are not confined to California. Among the country's 40 largest metros, New York City, Buffalo, Seattle, Miami and Chicago rounded out the top 10 priciest places to buy gas.

The surge at the pump is the result of rising crude oil prices, which have grown significantly since 2004, when a barrel sold for $26. On Wednesday, a barrel went for $93.

Golden State Guzzlers

Still, west coast drivers are hit hardest. Those in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles pay more at the pump than those in Houston or Dallas, where the average price per gallon Wednesday was $2.90 and $2.923, respectively, due to such factors as fuel taxes, environmental standards and costs of business like regulatory burdens and taxes.

Ten Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas
Rank City
1 San Francisco
2 San Jose
3 San Diego
4 Sacramento
5 Los Angeles
6 New York City
7 Buffalo
8 Seattle
9 Miami
10 Chicago

What's more, the difference between, say, San Francisco and Houston is more pronounced this time of year since California requires cleaner fuel year round. Texas, like many Southern and Midwestern states, eases up on such requirements during the winter months when consumption slows. California's higher environmental standard increases refining costs, which get passed along to the consumer.

Why So Steep?

Crude oil's output is heavily influenced by the 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, each of whose yield makes oil such a volatile commodity. For example, earlier this month crude oil approached $100 per barrel due in large part to Mexico cutting a fifth of its crude-oil production. Also affecting prices? The weak U.S. dollar. Because oil is traded internationally in dollars, much of the per barrel price increase over the last few years also has to do with the slipping greenback.

Last week crude hovered around $93 a barrel, and crude futures are starting to dip below $90, as OPEC is expected to increase output, which in turn will lower prices. OPEC restricts output to keep prices high, but it isn't in its interest for prices to skyrocket because this would dent consumption.

Some hope rising oil prices might increase acceptance of corn-based ethanol as an alternative, green energy source, but the ethanol market has its own problems.

This year, $7 billion was spend in federal biofuel subsidies, resulting in a 20% increase in acres of corn planted. Investors, looking for a fast buck, have in turn produced far more corn for ethanol production than there is blending capacity or consumer demand.

A flooded market has made it more cost effective for ethanol producers to hold on to their supply than to sell it. Some factories in North America and Australia have shut down completely as a result. It's a market in disarray.

"Initially, [the subsidies] looked like a pure handout, but now it looks like its suckered investors into losing a lot of money," says Michael Liebreich, CEO of New Energy Finance, a London-based analyst firm. "Right now oil could be at $120 [per barrel] and it wouldn't make any difference...the speed that the private equity industry poured money into the industry is beyond its profitability."

The national price average for for E-85 -- an ethanol gasoline mix -- is $2.478 a gallon, according to the American Automotive Association, but when that figure is adjusted for energy generated by volume, E-85 costs $3.261 per gallon. Based on figures from the Energy Information Administration, E-85 generates about 25% fewer BTUs (energy unit) than does gasoline and, at its adjusted price, costs about 16 cents more per gallon.

There are, at present, about 4.4 million flex-fuel cars on American roadways and less than 1% of American service stations offer E-85.

A Better Bet

Unless huge oil fields are discovered in America, the solution to lower gas costs, experts say, lies in efficiency of consumption. From a city planning perspective, step one is reducing congestion. In its 2007 "Urban Mobility Study," the Texas Transportation Institute estimates that drivers in the nation's 437 urban areas wasted 2.9 billion gallons of fuel last year due to traffic delays.

Expanding roadways and building better transit systems relieves congestion, but both are costly. Some say improving traffic efficiency can be a much cheaper way to lessen congestion. Two ways to do this: systems such as service patrols, which comb heavily trafficked areas and help stranded motorists and ramp monitoring systems, which involves the installation of traffic lights on entrance ramps that regulate the frequency with which cars enter a freeway or highway.

"There's room for us to expand upon our management of the system," says David Schrank, co-author of the TTI study. "We can make our operations much more efficient through things like service patrols or ramp metering...very few areas that are managing 100% of their system, and there's room to improve on their management by going beyond the freeway to the arterial streets."

Congratulations Baltimore

http://www.tailgatingideas.com/2007/10/18/baltimore-top-tailgating-city/#more-43

Congratulations Baltimore

Baltimore, a city esteemed for its crab houses, Inner Harbor and home of one of the NFL’s most rugged defenses, now has another claim to fame: it’s the best football tailgating city in the United States. Runners-up were Denver, Houston, San Diego and Cincinnati. This ranking was funded and backed by DirecTV and KVH Industries, Inc. Both are companies that have a stake in encouraging more fans to go high-tech in their tailgating ventures. Which ones were ranked the worst by these “experts”? St. Louis, Detroit and Seattle all ranked at the bottom. See where your city ranked.

The main criteria in forming this ranking included stadium parking lots, overall tailgating environment, tailgating-fan enthusiasm and the sales of tailgating accessories like in-car live TV systems and mobile programming. Taking into account all these factors, these experts visited 31 NFL cities (both the Giants and the Jets share the same stadium) plus NFL-hopeful Los Angeles. Apparently it took this group of experts four years to compile all the information and to visit all of the cities to gather this information and make their rankings. With all the criteria considered, Baltimore came out on top.

Rounding out the top 10 were Miami (sixth), Tampa (seventh), Kansas City (eighth), Buffalo (ninth) and Philadelphia and Phoenix (tied for tenth). The complete 32-city ranking can be found at the bottom of this article. Other factors that would help a particular stadium and city’s “tailgating-friendliness” quotient included stadium parking lot sizes, fees, accessibility, hours of operation and special facilities and programs for tailgaters. Oh yeah, the sale of DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket packages and TracVision mobile satellite TV systems for cars and RVs in 2006-2007 also played a role.

Baltimore’s top ranking is attributed to its high scores in all four categories while Tampa, Miami and Buffalo benefited from high tailgating expert ratings and superior stadium or parking facilities boosted Denver, Houston and Cincinnati. Ongoing construction of the Meadowlands Xanadu and Patriots Place projects limited the scores of New York and Boston, respectively, while parking or tailgating restrictions in Green Bay, Chicago, Detroit, and Seattle similarly affected their tailgating scores. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Rose Bowl were used for evaluation.

Keep in mind that this “study” was funded by two large corporations that want to encourage the consumption of their products and programming. We’re not saying the results were skewed or are we questioning the integrity of the rankings but please know where the information is coming from. think your city and stadium should be ranked higher? Maybe you should get your fellow tailgaters to buy more portable satellite TV systems and subscribe to DirecTV. That may help your rankings. If you are unconcerned on how your city ranks, keep up that attitude and create your own tailgating style.

The following is a complete list of all 32 cities ranked most “tailgating-friendly” cities in the U.S. by KVH Industries, DirecTV and tailgating experts:

1. Baltimore
2. Denver
3. Houston
4. San Diego
5. Cincinnati
6. Miami
7. Tampa
8. Kansas City
9. Buffalo
10. Philadelphia (tied)
10. Phoenix (tied)
12. Washington, D.C.
13. Green Bay
14. Jacksonville
15. Oakland, CA
16. Indianapolis
17. Nashville
18. New York (tied)
18. Pittsburgh (tied)
18. Boston (tied)
21. San Francisco
22. Cleveland
23. Charlotte
24. Los Angeles
25. Minneapolis
26. Dallas
27. Chicago
28. Atlanta
29. New Orleans
30. St. Louis
31. Detroit
32. Seattle