Money Magazine's "best places to live" cover story fails to take into account the cost of transportation.

Money magazine’s “100 Best Places to Live in America” is the most recent, high-profile example of how we need to re-think our definition of affordability when it comes to where we live. A quick scan of the communities that topped Money’s list suggests the magazine didn’t consider the cost of transportation in making their selections. Many of the places — suburban Minneapolis, suburban Baltimore, suburban Dallas, — are low-density, outer-ring suburbs that lack transit options and require households to drive most places and own several cars.

Like the Money article, many of us fall into the trap of thinking affordability boils down to the cost of our mortgage or rent payments. That encourages a “drive ‘til you qualify” mentality, where home-hunters pass over city neighborhoods or inner-ring suburbs and choose to live in outer-ring communities where housing is cheaper. However, these people soon learn that their new community is not as affordable as they thought, finding themselves stuck behind the wheel to get to work, school and the grocery store.

A true measure of affordability must take into account housing and transportation costs, which are the two biggest expenses for households. That’s why CNT developed the H+T Affordability Index. The innovative web tool allows users to see the average household housing and transportation costs by region and neighborhood.

Although transportation costs do not necessarily define a community, transportation costs certainly should not be ignored when determining the best place to live for one’s readers or one’s family. CNT staff read Money’s rankings and wondered: These places may rank highly among Money’s various criteria — jobs/economy, arts/leisure, health, education, and housing affordability — but what are families in these places paying for transportation? And, how do their costs compare with inner-ring suburbs or city neighborhoods that have residents with similar incomes?”

We crunched some numbers using our H+T^SM Index, and you can see what we found for Money’s top five places below. What’s clear is that people who move to these locations may find themselves needing more cars to drive everywhere they need to go, discovering too late that compact, transit-rich communities are often much more affordable when transportation costs are taken into account. There may in fact be better places to live than Money’s “best places,” at least from a true affordability perspective.

#1 Eden Prairie, Minnesota
The average household in Eden Prairie — Money’s best place to live — owns 1.7 cars, drives a little over 19,000 miles a year, and spends $897 per month on transportation costs. The average household in Edina, an inner-ring suburb of the Twin Cities, owns slightly fewer cars (1.6), drives nearly 4,000 fewer miles a year (15,057), and saves about $90 a month ($810) on transportation costs compared to Eden Prairie. A slightly greater percentage of Edina households take public transit for their commutes: 7 percent versus 5 percent in Eden Prairie.

Get even closer to downtown, in Minneapolis’ Prospect Park neighborhood, where household incomes roughly match Eden Prairie’s, and the average household owns 1.4 cars, drives 11,679 miles a year, and spends $709 per month on transportation. Sixteen percent of households in Prospect Park get to work by public transit. Compared with Eden Prairie’s average household, the average Prospect Park household spends $188 less per month on transportation and saves $2,256 a year.

#2 Ellicott City, Maryland
Located 21 miles west of Baltimore, the average household in Ellicott City owns 1.6 cars, drives 20,816 miles a year, and spends $890 per month on transportation costs. By comparison, in Towson, a suburb nearer downtown Baltimore, the average household owns the same number of cars but drives 6,000 miles less per year (14,739) than the Ellicott City family. The Towson household spends $781 in monthly transportation costs.

The average household in Baltimore’s Guilford neighborhood owns 1.4 cars, drives 13,956 miles a year, and spends $736 per month on transportation costs. The Guilford household has an extra $154 per month ($1,848 annually) freed up to save or pay for other expenses.

More households in Guilford take public transit to work than those outside the city. Only 3 percent of households in Ellicott City commute via transit, 6 percent take transit in Towson, while 16 percent of households in Guilford leave their car at home when heading to work.

#3 Newton, Massachusetts
The average household in Newton — an inner-ring suburb of Boston served by light rail, commuter rail and bus — owns 1.6 cars, drives 15,656 miles a year, and spends $805 per month on transportation costs. The average household in Back Bay, a Boston neighborhood, owns less than one car (.8), drives less than 7,466 miles annually, and spends $442 per month on transportation. Eleven percent of families in Newton take transit to work, while 42 percent of those in Back Bay take the “T” or the bus. The average Back Bay household spends $363 less on monthly transportation costs than the Newton household, adding up to $4,356 in annual savings.

#4 Bellevue, Washington
The average Bellevue household owns 1.8 cars, drives 15,220 miles a year, and spends $910 per month on transportation costs. Across Lake Washington in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, the average household owns 1.6 cars, drives 10,090 miles per year, and spends $788 per month on transportation. Twenty-one percent of Capitol Hill households commute by transit, while only 10 percent of Bellevue households do. The Capitol Hill household also spends $122 less on transportation than the Bellevue family, saving $1,464 a year.

#5 McKinney, Texas
The average household in McKinney, 30 miles north of Dallas, owns 1.7 cars, drives nearly 21,600 miles a year, and spends $908 a month on transportation. In Richardson, a suburb roughly halfway between McKinney and Dallas, the average household owns slightly few cars (1.6) but drives significantly less each year (14,811 miles), and spends $793 per month on transportation costs.

Meanwhile, in Dallas’ Historic District, the average household owns 1.2 cars, drives less than 9,700 miles per year, and spends $600 per month on transportation. The Historic District household saves $308 per month or nearly $3,700 annually on transportation compared with the McKinney household.

Only 3 percent of McKinney households commute using transit, 5 percent in Richardson, and 20 percent of those in the Historic District leave their cars at home when they head to work.

To learn more about the affordability of your neighborhood, go to htaindex.org.

To respond to this missed opportunity at enacting a comprehensive climate policy, the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP) has drafted a fresh list of recommendations that President Obama can implement in the near term. As PCAP Executive Director William Becker, put it, “Congress has passed the ball back to President Obama. He should run with it.”

The 5-point plan will help strengthen the federal government’s partnership with state and local governments, and can demonstrate the U.S. leadership on climate change when the international community meets this November in Cancun to continue work to enact a global climate treaty.

The five recommendations are:

1. Work with states, tribal governments, and local governments to create a national roadmap to the clean energy economy
2. Declare a war on energy waste
3. Begin reinventing national transportation policy
4. Eliminate fossil energy subsidies under the Administration’s control
5. Establish ecosystem restoration as a climate action strategy

CNT’s research and expertise in transportation, land use, and climate change formed the basis for much of the 2008 plan’s transportation agenda and are implicit in the newest set of recommendations. The H+T Affordability Index, for example, is cited as a tool that can help reinvent national transportation policy by giving consumers, developers and public officials needed information when making housing and planning decisions.

The Presidential Climate Action Project submitted “Plan B: Near-Term Presidential Actions for Energy & Environmental Leadership” to the Obama Administration on August 5. CNT President, Scott Bernstein, serves on PCAP’s National Advisory Committee and continues to work with the group to help create public policy that addresses climate change and energy issues.

Read more about CNT and the Presidential Climate Action Project here.

Download “Plan B: Near-Term Presidential Actions for Energy & Environmental Leadership” (PDF)

A partnership between HUD, DOT, EPA. Secretaries Shaun Donovan, Ray LaHood, Lisa Jackson, respectively. Photo: EPA

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), approved the Livable Communities Act on August 3. The legislation would create an Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities to encourage comprehensive regional planning and sustainable development by breaking down federal agency and department barriers.

The Livable Communities Act would strengthen communities and increase housing affordability for families by encouraging sustainable development. Grant money made available through the legislation, for instance, would fund projects that prioritize vibrant downtown business districts within walking distance of homes and transit stops, brownfield redevelopment in struggling industrial areas, and public transit options to reduce household transportation costs—the second highest expense for Americans after housing.

The Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities would oversee two grant programs established by the Livable Communities Act. One grant program would make $2.2 billion available for communities to build and improve affordable housing, strengthen public transportation, promote transit-oriented development, and redevelop brownfield sites. A second grant program would provide $500 million to support comprehensive regional planning that recognizes the interconnectedness of transportation, housing, community and economic development and environmental sustainability.

The full Senate will likely debate the Livable Communities Act in the fall. The U.S. House of Representatives has introduced a companion bill and will likely debate it later this year as well.

The Livable Communities Act both needs and deserves your support!

You can download this letter and fill in the relevant blanks to let your Senators and Representatives know that you support passage of the Livable Communities Act.

Find your Senators and Representatives. 

Our Lady Gate of Heaven Church in Calumet. Photo taken after a storm in the summer 2008. Before the bioswale was installed, the parking would be flooded for days after a big rain. The bioswale soaked up this rain after one day.

As Chicago-area residents continue to clean up from last weekend’s storms that dumped more than eight inches of rain in less than 48 hours, it is important to consider why such storms seem to be occurring more often and what we can do to lessen the damage as they happen in the future.

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that human-induced climate change is already altering our planet. The effects of climate change will affect all parts of the planet, including the Midwest, where we can expect more extreme summer heat days, threats to agriculture, and more intense and frequent storms.

Some changes are already occurring. Average yearly temperatures have steadily increased, snow comes to the region later and melts earlier than in the past, and heavy rains occur today roughly twice as often as they did a hundred years ago.

Although climate scientists cannot determine that a single weather event is the result of climate change, observed changes and climate projections suggest that more intense storms will increase as the planet’s climate changes.

The Chicago region, like most, relies almost exclusively on man-made infrastructure – curbs, gutters, pipes and catch basins – that whisk rain away from our streets and parking lots and release it into nearby streams and lakes. This current system is mostly effective, but has significant flaws:

• Existing infrastructure cannot handle the amount of rainfall produced during large storms and will be hard-pressed in the future to handle more intense storms expected in a changing climate. That means households and businesses will continue to experience flooding.
• Rain enters the same pipes that manage the region’s household sewage. When a large storm hits, the rain overwhelms the system, which results in raw sewage overflowing into the Chicago River and, thus, other bodies of water.
• Rain picks up pollutants when it runs off roadways and parking lots. The rainwater carries that pollution through the sewer system and into our streams and lakes, contaminating drinking water sources.
• Whisking rain away from where it falls prevents local aquifers from re-charging, meaning that communities reliant on well water will face water shortages as they grow.

Meanwhile, green infrastructure, using natural systems to manage stormwater by retaining and filtering rain where it falls, can reduce runoff and flooding and remove pollutants. Numerous green infrastructure projects in the region have already made a positive impact on the properties around them. Simple green infrastructure systems installed in 2008 at St. Margaret Mary Church in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood have effectively protected the property from extensive flooding since.

Additionally, many types of green infrastructure offer benefits above and beyond what conventional infrastructure provides. Green infrastructure installations increase the natural beauty and economic value of developed areas, provide habitat and connectivity for plants and animals, clean and re-charge groundwater sources, and reduce the urban heat island effect. Some green infrastructure systems, such as green roofs and rain gardens, may improve air quality and provide benefits for the climate.

Earlier this year, a task force of planners and engineers from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) completed a green infrastructure analysis mandated by the Illinois General Assembly. The UIC-CNT report concluded that green infrastructure is effective and affordable solution to stormwater runoff and should be implemented across the state.

“The performance of green infrastructure is at the very least comparable to detention approaches to stormwater management,” the report found. And, in terms of cost, the report estimated that “green infrastructure is frequently 5-30% less costly to construct and about 25% less costly over its life cycle compared with traditional infrastructure.

Last month, in a letter to the General Assembly and Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois EPA director Douglas P. Scott endorsed the findings of the UIC-CNT green infrastructure report and laid out next steps for his agency to implement the report recommendations.

With the likelihood of increased heavy storms in future years due to a changing climate, creating a robust and sustainable stormwater management system is more important than ever before. Green infrastructure will allow us to sustainably adapt to a changing climate as a society, and it will help individual businesses and homeowners keep stormwater out of their buildings.

The theory behind the bill is simple: Housing costs do not end when we sign our rent or mortgage checks. Where we live has other costs associated with getting around: to work, to school, to the grocery store. How much that costs depends on where we live and what options are available to move us from point A to point B.

Given that reality, a true measure of affordability must take into account housing and transportation costs. In 2006, CNT launched the H + T Affordability Index^SM, a web tool that gives a more accurate assessment of affordability by providing homeowners and policy makers the housing and transportation costs for a community.

Just as families need to have the best information before they choose where to live, our state policy makers should have the best information as they invest scarce public resources in housing. With the H + T Index tool signed into law, public officials in five key state agencies will now have the best available tool to guide their investment decisions toward those that will truly reduce the cost of living for working families.

This legislation also positions Illinois as a national leader, making it the first state to create legislation that links housing and transportation affordability to reduce the cost of living for our households. New national priorities that link transportation and housing affordability to the disbursement of federal funds will make Illinois well-positioned to compete for those dollars.

CNT views this as just the beginning. We will work with the five state agencies, including the Illinois Dept. of Transportation and the Illinois Housing Development Authority, to make certain the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index Act will help create better and more affordable housing and transportation well into the future.

While I-GO had the keys to the i-MiEV, we invited political leaders, funders and journalists out to preview the car and take it for a spin. Check out who took it for a spin here. Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune transportation reporters Mary Wisniewski and Jon Hilkevitch recently wrote about I-GO and their impressions of the i-MiEV here and here.

I-GO shared the car with its members as well. I-G0 members were invited to preview the i-MiEV on July 27, at I-GO’s Wicker Park office. Over 25 members came by our office to meet the i-MiEV.

CNT founded I-GO in 2002. As an environmentally driven non-profit, I-GO is working to catalyze a set of transportation innovations that make it feasible and desirable for Chicago residents to get around conveniently and economically without having to own a car. At the same time, I-GO membership helps reduce driving and cuts global warming emissions. Adding electric vehicles to its fleet makes the already-green I-GO that much greener.

Today’s news from Capitol Hill underscores why CNT’s work is more important than ever. Since the day CNT opened its doors more than 30 years ago, our philosophy is that change comes at the neighborhood level. And although it is crucial for the United States to implement a federal-level strategy to improve our energy system and reduce our global warming pollution, many of the actions required to meet any national climate goal will occur at the local level. That means every community can and should continue to move forward and do its part.

That’s why we at CNT focus on giving communities the tools and information they need to take action that improves and strengthens their communities and reduces their impact on the environment. For example:

• CNT directs cities on how best to monitor its emissions and create strategies to reduce them. CNT’s mitigation research for the Chicago Climate Action Plan serves as a guide for other communities to measure and strategically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CNT Board Member Julia Parzen’s “Lessons Learned: Creating the Chicago Climate Action Plan” can help cities design their own climate action plan process that engages the whole community and creates real climate action.

• CNT brings energy efficiency retrofits for our building stock to scale. CNT’s multi-family building energy retrofits have created real dollar savings for building owners while reducing energy demand and cutting air pollution and global warming emissions.

• CNT created and continues to disseminate the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index (H+T^SM Index), a tool for policy makers and homeowners to assess the transportation costs of a particular community. The H+T Index provides a complete picture of housing affordability and encourages people to re-think where they live based on transportation costs. Urging homeowners and policy makers to broaden their definition of affordability promotes dense community development and helps reduce driving, cut auto pollution, and save people money.

• CNT launched I-GO Car Sharing, which provides a sustainable, convenient, cost-effective alternative to car ownership. I-GO’s 15,000 members cumulatively save an estimated $25 million each year on avoided costs to own, insure and repair a vehicle.

• CNT promotes wide-scale use of green infrastructure, which can reduce the energy and conventional man-made infrastructure needed to manage and treat stormwater, while helping communities adapt to the changing rainfall patterns caused by global warming. Green infrastructure can also reduce the urban heat island effect and the need for dirty electricity to cool buildings in summer.

Through all of these projects and more, CNT will continue to work to help communities sustainably address global climate change while creating cost savings for residents and businesses.

As it stands, most discussions of infrastructure investment do not include customer benefits anywhere near the beginning of the discussion. Because many smart grid investments need to rely on consumer benefits as well as system benefits for a strong business case, lack of a robust consumer-oriented strategy weakens the argument for smart grid investments.

Recently, CNT CEO Kathy Tholin took part in the Economist magazine‘s “Thought Leadership” panel, as part of a Smart Grid Tour, sponsored by Siemens. The tour has been visiting major U.S. cities like New Orleans, Chicago and Washington, D.C. to communicate trends in the industry and identify leaders around the country who have been working and putting together all facets necessary to address the creation of a smart grid electric system—from generation to transmission as well as distribution through consumption. The event in Chicago focused on how to build sustainable energy and smart grid platforms that work within cities like Chicago, with a focus on buildings as a major consumer of energy.

Kathy zeroed-in on the need for critical information in order to make the decisions about one’s energy use as a key factor in reducing demand. Comparing energy usage to transportation use, Kathy pointed out that consumers do not really know what they are spending on transportation, because they do not have the kind of information (or the access to it) to make better choices about their spending. And the same can be said for energy consumption; without the necessary baseline of information on usage, it’s difficult for consumers to be most effective in consuming less.

Smart grids have the potential to disseminate key information on usage and reduction and savings mechanisms more readily than current outdated technologies. CNT Energy is actively involved in exploring the consumer benefits that come from the implementation of smart grid technologies and in 2008, convened the Illinois Smart Grid Initiative to begin the stakeholder driven exploration of Smart Grid benefits for Illinois consumers. Currently CNT Energy is a participant in the Illinois Commerce Commission initiated Illinois Statewide Smart Grid Collaborative.

A key to CNT Energy’s interest in the smart grid is how smart metering can enable new options for consumers. These include new rate options as well as the development and implementation of new web-based and in-home technologies that can better manage energy use and reduce costs for consumers. The work of CNT Energy on residential real-time pricing in Illinois informs CNT Energy’s belief that providing consumers access to variable market-based pricing is a powerful and effective way to make the electric system more efficient and bring real economic benefits to consumers. With Illinois’ initiatives in this area now the largest deployment of residential real-time pricing in the country, they provide important models for other states and utilities.

For a commentary on CNT Energy’s view of getting smart rates right, see Anthony Star’s blog post on GE’s smart grid blog, another major participant in the private’s sector’s participation in driving smart grid innovation.

Abogo measures the money a typical household, living in a given neighborhood, would spend getting around– including car ownership, car use, and transit use. It also provides the carbon emissions associated with using a car. CNT developed Abogo so that individuals can now measure the true cost and impact of where they live in 337 metropolitan areas in the U.S., in the same way that planners and municipalities have been using the H + T Index to better understand the combined costs of housing and transportation at the regional level, for example.

CNT partnered with the Urban Land Institute and Center for Housing Policy in 2009 to develop the Terwilliger Housing + Transportation Calculators for Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco, where consumers can access up-to-date cost data to make informed housing decisions.

Over the next few months, CNT will be refining these tools to help individuals factor in transportation costs when considering how much it costs to live in a particular city. We’re working to calculate better estimates based on the way someone lives now—and to provide information that helps individuals and households make small changes in the way they get around—while saving money and helping to reduce climate impact at the same time.

TRY OUT THE NEW ABOGO TOOL!

As we further refine the calculator, we’re looking for impressions and ideas how to make it most useful. Feel free to send comments to abogo-info@cnt.org. We have also developed an API, so if you’re interested in getting transportation cost information on your website, see here.

This session, organized and co-hosted by the EPA and HUD, will focus on local and regional ideas and concerns about climate change impacts in the Great Lakes region, including impacts to urban infrastructure and the Great Lakes ecosystem.

There will be a live webcasts of the events available online.

Background

The White House Council on Environmental Quality provides the following background:

In 2009, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration initiated the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, which includes representatives from more than 20 Federal Agencies. When the President signed the Executive Order on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance, on October 5, 2009, he called on the Task Force to develop, within one year, Federal recommendations for adapting to climate change impacts both domestically and internationally.

On March 16, 2010, the Task Force released an interim report which outlines progress to date and recommends key components to include in a national strategy on climate change adaptation.

Meetings that already have been held include…

Oregon Regional Meeting: June 6, 2010 – Portland

* View the media advisory
* View the agenda
* Watch the video

Florida Regional Meeting: June 23, 2010 – Miami

* View the media advisory
* View the agenda
* Watch the video

Hawaii Regional Meeting: July 9, 2010 – Honolulu

* View the media advisory
* View the agenda
* Watch the video

The next two upcoming meetings…

Chicago, Illinois:

When:
Thursday, July 15
Media availability at 12:30 p.m. and public outreach meeting at 1 p.m.
Note: Please allow up to 30 minutes to get through security at the Metcalfe Federal Building.

Where:
Room 325, Metcalf Federal Building, 77 W. Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, IL

Who:

** Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality

** Ronald Sims, Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

** Robert Verchick, Deputy Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;

** Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works

** John Balbus, Senior Adviser for Public Health at the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Denver, Colorado:

Organized by the United States Department of Agriculture and co-hosted by the American Farmland Trust and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Go here for more information, agenda updates, and to RSVP.

When:
Monday, July 19, 2010; 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Where:
Doubletree Hotel Denver
Grand Ballroom
3203 Quebec Street
Denver, Colorado 80207
More Information

Online Resources:

Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. Led by White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and including more than 20 Federal Agencies.

Integrating Valuation Methods to Recognize Green Infrastructure’s Multiple Benefits. Reviews current methods, tools and case studies of valuation of the economic and social benefits produced by green infrastructure practices, particularly as they are applied in urban settings.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Chicago: Emissions Inventories and Reduction Strategies for Chicago and its Metropolitan Region. A summary of the research methods and results CNT used to develop Chicago’s greenhouse gas inventory for the Chicago Climate Action Plan. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Great Lakes Research.

Chicago’s Guide to Completing an Energy Efficiency & Conservation Strategy. The purpose of Chicago’s Guide is to help cities and counties to develop a long-term and sustainable energy efficiency and conservation plan and maximize the opportunity for cost savings, environmental benefits, financial leverage and economic development.

Summary Report: Chicago’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions: An Inventory, Forecast and Mitigation Analysis for Chicago and the Metropolitan Region. This research was part of a broader effort by the City to determine the local ramifications of climate change, for its citizens and for City operations. In addition to CNT’s work on emissions and mitigation strategies, the City engaged researchers to examine climate-change adaptation, economic impacts, and the effects of climate change on City departments.

Chicago’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions: An Inventory, Forecast and Mitigation Analysis for Chicago and the Metropolitan Region. Commissioned by the city to help create its recently released Climate Action Plan, CNT conducted the emissions and mitigation-strategies research to reach the city’s emission reduction target of 25% below 1990 levels by the year 2020.

The Presidential Climate Action Plan. Developed by a broad group of leaders from around the nation, the PCAP is the most comprehensive and detailed plan for national climate action yet presented to the presidential candidates and the American people. It consists of more than 100 proposed policies and programs covering more than a dozen critical areas of endeavor. More broadly, PCAP identifies how the 44th President and the Congress can help America find its path to a 21st Century economy that achieves three critical objectives: security, opportunity and stewardship.

CNT’s Climate news archive.