Weekly John Locke Foundation research division newsletter focusing on environmental issues.
This newsletter highlights relevant analysis done by the JLF and other think tanks as well as items in the news.
1. Cost of driving down dramatically in last 60 years
The American Automobile Association (AAA) just released its annual study on the cost of driving and the incredible results noted in the headline were nowhere to be found, either in the newspaper coverage or AAA’s own reporting. On the AAA website the headline reads "Cost of owning and operating a vehicle in US increases nearly 2 percent." The actual amount is 1.96 percent. This sounds somewhat alarming until one realizes that this is actually less than the current inflation rate of 2 percent, so in real terms the cost of driving has actually declined slightly since last year. Sounding very dramatic the headline at MSN.com reads, "Driving a car costs more than $9000 per year" and the Los Angeles Times headline reads "AAA says jump in maintenance bills drives increase in car operating costs."
Now to reiterate, adjusted for inflation, "car operating costs" have actually gone down slightly since last year’s report. This takes us to the real story embedded in the AAA study. According to AAA the current cost of driving one’s car is 60.8 cents per mile. But buried at the very end of the press release is the following statement: "AAA has published ‘Your Driving Costs’ since 1950. That year, driving a car 10,000 miles per year cost 9 cents per mile…" The implication is clear; in the US automobiles have gotten much more expensive to operate over the last 63 years. But in case you haven’t noticed, thanks to the Federal Reserve, there’s been a heck of a lot of inflation since 1950. So I decided to check into what 9 cents in 1950 would be in today’s dollars. What I discovered is what the above headline suggests — the costs of driving have gone down dramatically. Nine cents in 1950 is the equivalent of 86 cents today. In other words the cost of driving a car has dropped by over 25 cents per mile, or almost 30 percent since AAA first started doing these calculations. Yet, this truly good news story is not only being ignored, but the implication is that the trends are in the opposite direction.
2. Ozone Report of 2013
The 2013 ozone season began on April 1 and, as in the past, each week during the ozone — often called smog — season, this newsletter will report how many, if any, high ozone days have been experienced throughout the state during the previous week, where they were experienced, and how many have been recorded during the entire season to date. According to current EPA standards, a region or county experiences a high ozone day if a monitor in that area registers the amount of ozone in the air as 76 parts per billion (ppb) or greater. The official ozone season will end on October 31. All reported data is preliminary and issued by the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, which is part of the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources. During the period from April 8 to April 14 there were no high ozone days recorded on any of the state’s monitors.
The table below shows all of North Carolina’s ozone monitors and the high reading on those monitors for each day of the 7 day period, April 8-14.
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