Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

The paper vs. plastic question must die

Ok, I'm whining. But the obsession with paper vs. plastic shopping bags just plain bugs me.

As The Oregonian's Michael Milstein correctly points out: both paper and plastic have their pros and cons. Plastic has some surprising environmental advantages (more here), but also some unexpected drawbacks, including gumming up recycling equipment -- which makes it hard to figure out which option is actually worse in practice. But quite clearly, reusing bags you already have is better than asking for a new one.

The thing is, we already know all this. What's more, we've known it for decades.

And (heresy alert!) the truth is that paper-vs-plastic is an astonishingly low-priority issue.

Do gas prices affect behavior or not?

Despite record-setting gas prices, U.S. drivers haven't changed their gas-guzzling habits, says AP. Not only are we consuming as much as we always have, new vehicle sales seem to be tilting even more in favor of trucks than cars.

But wait, USA Today disagrees. They say that drivers are, in fact, starting to cut back on how much they drive -- a clear sign that higher gas prices are starting to bite.

Who's right? Who cares! Either way, the consumer response to massive increases in gas prices over the last five years has been teensy-tiny.

Making public transit work

Greater Vancouver leads the Northwest in transit ridership, with somewhere between two and three times as many annual bus and train rides per person as Portland and Seattle.

So the obvious question: How come? Why does Vancouver do so much better in transit statistics than its southern neighbors?

People-powered transit makes you happy

Transportation uber-geek Todd Litman looked at studies of people's satisfaction with their commutes (PDF). The results: transit isn't all that popular, compared with a car commute:

The leftmost bar represents a car-only commute; you can see that it gets higher satisfaction ratings (the green part) and lower dissatisfaction (the orange) than both transit and car+transit commutes, which are the next two bars. (Despite the popularity of park-and-rides, there are lots of yucky orange feelings towards a mixed commute.)

But, wait! If you dive into the numbers, it turns out there's another side to this story. As it turns out, people don't have an inherent preference for cars, or an innate dislike of buses or trains. The real story is that people don't particularly like spending time in vehicles, period.