Daily Score Blog

According to the American Podiatric Medical Association, three of the 10 best U.S. cities for walking are in the Northwest:  Seattle (#3), Portland (#4), and Eugene, OR (#8).  Other cities in the top ten, in order, were Arlington, VA; San Francisco; Boston; Washington, DC; New York City; Jersey City; and Denver. The APMA ranking is based on a number of measures of physical activity, ranging from dog ownership to the share of people who go to museums. 

Obviously, to some extent, lists like this are a bit silly -- they project an appearance of precision that just isn't justified.  But on the other hand, maybe living in a walking-friendly city will make up for all of those donuts that I eat.

This week's US News and World Report has a great article on food -- and, in particular, why it's becoming increasingly difficult to resist overeating.

Although there's been some recent controversy over exactly how bad obesity is for your health,  it's now perfectly clear that rising obesity rates are a major public health problem. And the US News article serves as a great reminder that, as important as it may be to emphasize personal responsibility in maintaining healthy eating habits, America's culture of food--in which high-calorie food is cheap, ubiquitous, and heavily marketed--makes it harder and harder to make healthy choices. The opening paragraph makes  a great teaser for the rest of the article:

It's everywhere. Tank up your car, and you walk past soft pretzels with cheese sauce. Grab a cup of coffee, and you see doughnuts, danishes, and cookies the size of hubcaps. Stop at Staples for an ink cartridge, and you confront candy bars at the register.

Too true.

Just like Canada, the United Kingdom is seriously considering vehicle feebates, reports the invaluable newsletter Green Budget News. 

To recap, feebates (sometimes called "freebates") are a great way to harness market forces to encourage energy efficiency and discourage pollution.  The article above gives a good explanation of how they'd work:

The proposal would require owners of more polluting vehicles to pay an extra levy, while drivers of environmentally friendly cars would reap the benefits and receive a grant as a reward for buying fuel-efficient vehicles.

So people who buy gas guzzlers pay a fee that's refunded to people who buy gas-sippers--creating a powerful incentive for continual improvements to automobile efficiency.

One of the great features of feebates is that they pay for themselves -- taxpayers don't even get involved.   In fact, the UK proposal is to use feebates to replace the existing vehicle excise duty, which apparently has had little effect on consumers' vehicle choices.

And by the way--I can't recommend Green Budget News enough.  Almost every article holds some fragmentary insight into tax shifting and market oriented sustainability.  And while it's focused on the European Union, it's chock full of ideas that could be adopted in this part of the world as well.  The current edition of the newsletter, which is published by Green Budget Germany, also contains informative updates on congestion pricing in Scotland and Austria and vehicle, pollution, and energy taxes in Denmark.

Microsoft is planning to expand its Redmond, Washington headquarters, adding between 10,000 and 20,000 new employees -- plus the parking garages that will be needed to accomodate their cars. And the company is offering to pay $30 million for transportation and infrastructure improvements, including $15 million for a bridge construction project, to help compensate for the increased traffic the expansion will generate.

The $30 million offer may seem like a generous gesture, in an era in which it seems de rigeur for major companies to demand tax concessions from local governments before they'll agree to add this many jobs.

But here's some context.  If the company hires 20,000 new people at its Redmond campus, and they mostly drive alone to work, that would add up to 40,000 one-way commutes per day into Redmond.  Now, one lane of interstate highway can carry about 2,000 cars per hour.  So the increased traffic would be enough, in theory, to clog a 4-lane highway for 5 consecutive hours.

The new issue (pdf) of urban design newsletter Price Tags takes readers on a tour of Salt Lake City, where the streets are so wide that "walk signals have countdown clocks and crosswalks come equipped with flags for pedestrians to carry as they undertake the journey across a downtown street."

The issue explores the origins of Salt Lake's wide streets and 10-acre blocks; two ambitious new buildings, including the new city library; and Salt Lake's investment in green roofs.

For a full archive of Price Tags, go here.

Wonder no longer:  oil and gas get subsidies out the wazoo.  Here's the latest example from British Columbia...

The province will spend $408 million over 15 years to bolster northeastern B.C.'s oil and gas industry, Minister of Energy and Mines Richard Neufeld said Tuesday, which includes new or expanded support for resource road construction, community infrastructure, education and the reclamation of abandoned natural gas wells.

Of course, this sort of subusidy is just the tip of the iceberg:  in much of the US, oil and gas extraction get special tax treatment -- and, some would argue, privileged access to public lands; gas & automobile taxes don't pay for the full cost of roads; the health costs of car accidents and smog aren't included in the price of highway fuels; and the risks associated with global warming are borne by everyone across the globe, not just by those lucky enough to be able to afford to drive.

To me, this puts the subsidies for, say, wind power in perspective.  Renewable energy subsidies probably don't give an unfair advantage; they're just a way of levelling the playing field, so that--given all of the subsidies that already go to fossil fuels--wind and solar can compete on something approaching even footing.