Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

How much does congestion affect society?

The big story this week was congestion: the Texas Transportation Institute released its annual Urban Mobility Study to the typical fanfare. See, e.g., stories here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The headlines, as always, are gloomy: congestion's on the rise just about everywhere, and is wasting our time, gas, and money. The word from the researchers isn't particularly hopeful either. Sure, there are things that can be done to slow the increase in congestion. But they can be expensive -- and, worse, there's no guarantee that they'll actually work.

I dipped into the numbers a bit. And to the extent that the TTI estimates are actually accurate (which, as we've written about before, and as this LA Times story mentions, is a big question), it seems to me that there could be a silver lining in all of the wailing. You see, depending on how you look at things, congestion may not be as big a deal as the headlines make it out to be.

Demand for oil remains strong despite price increases

I was wrong.

Back in the summer of '05, when oil prices were flirting with $60 per barrel, I predicted that oil would surpass $70 before it fell below $50. That is, I thought that oil prices would continue to rise in the short term.

I got that part right. Oil prices on the futures market briefly touched the $70-mark that fall, and reached the mid-$70s by the following spring.

But I also predicted that oil would fall to $40 per barrel before it reached $80 -- on the theory that, over the course of several years, rising oil prices would put a crimp in demand, while goosing production a bit.

That part I got dead wrong.

It’s a mistake to view the economy as an abstraction

From a Seattle P-I story comes this gem of a quote about declining housing affordability: "It's going to affect people more so than the economy."

Uh, what's that again? The economic outlook is still rosy -- it's just, y'know, people who are in trouble.

Study shows that urban dwellings have less pavement per unit than suburban homes

Here's an interesting tidbit from the ever-geekalicious Todd Litman: a chart comparing average impervious surface per household in urban vs. suburban settings.

As you can see, large single-family lots -- the sort of homes that are surrounded by greenery -- actually require the most pavement overall. Apparently, it takes an awful lot of road space to get a homeowner to and from that exurban McMansion. (Take that, sprawl!)