And with a little work, that walk could be enjoyable.
Was the grocer on a Stroads? Those are multi lane roads that are difficult to cross even with a light. They’re just so wide. Typically 2 lanes each direction, then both left and right turn lanes at intersections.
And yes, the density helps improve the efficiency, but it isn’t the only way to make the neighborhood enjoyable to walk places.
Out of curiosity, did a lot of your neighbors walk to that store?
It’s not enough to walk to places, you need to be able to walk to a transit station. Maybe it worked for people 50 years ago, but nowadays people need more more more, everyone has ADHD now.
It was probably 5-15 minutes each way, depending on exactly where you were going and how fast you walked. If I had the dog on her leash and she understood that we were going to the pet supply store we could easily get there in under 5 minutes because we’d be running. The microbrewery was a long 10 minutes if you were walking. I only walked to the grocery store if I was calling that part of my workout and also only getting a few things. It was the burbs and there was a gigantic parking lot and I had the car, but really it was still under a mile so not too bad. Also depended on the weather. If it was hot and I was buying a quart of ice cream then I’d want to drive it home rather than having it half-melted by the time I got there. But on a gorgeous day I’d be more likely to grab my backpack and walk just to enjoy being outside.
I also biked to a number of businesses that were a little further away.
Depended on where you were going. Sometimes, not usually. To get to the Birkenstock store or AAA, yes. But there were crosswalks.
BTW, I never heard that word before. How do you pronounce it?
(Yes, I have walked to AAA on numerous occasions and chuckled at the irony. No, not the American Academy of Actuaries.)
I could definitely justify a 10 minute walk to that one. Might take a little longer than 10 minutes to walk back.
We definitely walked more than most of the neighbors, but it varied.
There was a bus stop 1/3 of a mile from the house.
I actually liked the cocktails at the restaurant across the street (owned by our next-door neighbors) better. But the microbrewery had good food.
Come to think of it, there were two grocery stores within walking distance. A specialty one and slightly further, a regular one.
The difference is staggering.
I stole that joke from Reddit, full disclosure.
Took some time, but a more robust answer for Indy re: cost. I’ve included both housing and transportation.
| Annual Average | Lowest 20% | 2nd 20% | Middle 20% | 4th 20% | Highest 20% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income After Tax | 14,592 | 35,833 | 56,688 | 87,627 | 175,237 |
| Housing | 12,602 | 15,123 | 18,152 | 23,151 | 36,854 |
| % of Income | 79.5% | 42.2% | 32.0% | 26.1% | 21.00% |
| Transportation | 4,550 | 6,459 | 9,362 | 13,036 | 17,396 |
| % of income | 31.2% | 18.0% | 16.5% | 14.7% | 9.9% |
[VA: I edited this to help provide better clarity for a chart layout. I hope you don't mind.]
So the bottom quintile is spending 110.7% of their income on housing & transportation alone?
Are they excluding government assistance from the income but then counting the expenditure or is the bottom quintile going into that much debt?
Kinda. This for for households. So the lowest income group has to make a choice…housing or transport. Either one blows the budget. Sux to be poor in America. Crime is also an option. Get an apartment and ride he bus…or get a car and live in it.
And btw, what’s an easy way to put in a table? Is there one?
You can copy/paste from Excel and it formats nicely.
I guess if you had a bucket for federal income tax, for the bottom quintile it would be significantly negative, so it makes sense that other items add up to way more than 100% (more than could be explained by debt).
It’s hard to appreciate the numbers without more context.
I edited your post to show the general format for putting things in a table.
Note that the “second” row of text will tell the software how to align the material in the column:
| - | → Default alignment
| :- | → Left align (default if a non-numeric character is present)
| -: | → Right align (default if all characters are numeric)
| :-: | → Center align.
Without looking more closely at what measures are used for each bucket . . . remember that these are some sort of “average” (most likely median) of everyone in that group and the numbers do not necessarily align.
But I would not count gov’t subsidies as “income” for a household; and housing costs likely reflect what is being charged directly to the tenant and not what the landlord is receiving (as these would be collected from different sources).
For section 8 housing subsidies I would agree. If the landlord is charging $800 a month and section 8 is covering $300 a month then I think you would simply say that the tenant is spending $500 a month on housing.
For EITC and ACTC, that’s rather murkier. A single mom with two kids and $15,000 of wages is looking at an EITC of around $6,000 and two ACTCs of $1,500 each for a total tax refund of $9,000 (plus her federal withholdings). That’s real money and it matters how you count it.
But I suppose rather than calling that income you could just say her federal taxes were negative $9,000 / negative 60%.
If, in the future, we make fewer trips by automobiles, rental vehicles will still need to travel more miles on the road than owned vehicles.
Owned vehicles only travel when the owner/operator has a place to go. Rental vehicles travel when the renter has a place to go and also travel when the rental vehicle is traveling from one fare to another and also travel to overnight (and possibly midday) storage locations.
Suppose the average length of a paid trip is L, the average length of a to-get-to-fare trip is D, the average length of the get-to-overnight-storage trip is O, and the number of fares per day is N. Then the the owned vehicles drive LN miles per day while the rental vehicles travel LN + D*N + O/N miles.