Tuesday, April 7, 2009

When Up Really Means Down*

Stumbled across this post the other day:
"Driving increases* in metro area (* actually decreases)"

Apparently, the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance released a report that stated that "more people drive, while fewer walk, bike and ride public transit."

However, as reported at Greater Greater Washington, this report contained a long footnote explaining that the data actually shows the opposite of the report findings.

Gotta love it.

The GGW.org article states:
Here's the email. The table claims driving increased from 81.3% of trips to 83% between 1994 and 2007/2008. The footnote, however, states that, "The geographical boundaries of the 2007/2008 and 1994 studies differ slightly. When the 1994 boundaries are used for both samples, the 2007/2008 results" show auto use declining to 80.3%.
The actual results from the survey, the Household Travel Study, are very interesting.
Reminds me of some other statemens we're hearing in the news - like how we have no desire to bloat bureaucracy but we're going to hire thousands of new federal employees; or how no lobbyist will work in an Obama White House, but they do.

Yeah, just what I thought. I guess Up really does mean Down these days*.

* [Enter your own footnote in the comments.]

Crossposted at RedState.

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