The beautiful skyline of Philadelphia.
When I think about moving to a different city or even just to a different neighborhood in Philadelphia, my first thought is to check the cost of housing. Most people know or guess that it is more expensive to live in New-York City than Philadelphia and that renting or buying a house in Gladwin will cost much more than the same in Levittown.
These days, with rising fuel cost, the cost of housing is not the full picture. To take more of the full picture into account you would want to factor in car ownership, car use and transit use and the associated Carbon Footprint.
That is where Abogo comes in. Abogo shows you how transportation impacts the affordability and sustainability of where you live. Abogo is an online tool that was built by the Center for Neighborhood Technology that let you discover the costs of where you live now, or where you might want to live.
How does it work?
- Enter a physical address in the window on top of the US Map
- A color coded map of your neighborhood shows Transportation Costs and CO2 Impact for an average Household.
- At the Bottom of the map you will find a button with the silhouette of a gas pump that says: “See how rising gas prices affect the cost of transportation”. Click on that button.
- An window will pop up where you will be able to slide a gas pump
along a gas price line. As you increase or decrease the cost of gas at the pump you, the application recomputes for you the monthly transportation cost for an “average household”. - At the bottom of the estimator, notice the link: “Find ways to lower your transportation cost”. If you click on the link, you find a page of well articulated and well presented suggestions on how you can decrease your transportation costs.
The H + T Index
The Center for Neighborhood Technology came up with Housing + Transportation Index which is another tool to measure the full cost of Housing and Transportation.
Notice that the light yellow color which covers all the densely populated neighborhood of Philadelphia and its immediate suburbs, represents housing cost at less than 30% of average income and Housing + Transportation costs at less than 45% of average income.
The blue color areas map to the suburban areas and have housing cost above 30% of average income and Housing + Transportation costs above 45% of average income.
Here are the link to the H+T Index for the Philadelphia area. The index also maps Gas Cost Impact (in 2000 vs 2008 prices), CO2 Impact per acre & per Household and provides a facility for custom comparison of side by side regional & national indicators.
Conclusion
If you want to minimize your transportation costs, move to more densely populated area. This is consistent with the data presented in this prior article: The End of Suburbia or Do you have more dollars to donate to your favorite oil company?
The Center for Neighborhood Technology has received the 2009 Mac Arthur Award of Creative and Effective Institutions.
