[quote=paramount]Facts on Temecula-Murrieta area commuting:
*A survey conducted by planning agencies in Riverside and San Diego counties found that more than half of Temecula-Murrieta-French Valley households had at least one person commuting outside the county. For them, the average drive time was one hour.
*Forbes Magazine recently ranked the area first in its list of America’s most unhealthy commutes, beating out every other major metropolitan area in the country, as Inland area drivers breathe the unhealthiest air and have the highest rate of fatal auto accidents per capita. Gas siphoning has also been noted as a problem for vehicles left unattended in the region.
*Workers who live and work in this city: 39.7%
I think when people live in an area for a long period of time, and they are happy living there perspectives become a bit skewed.[/quote]
Unfortunately these are not really facts, most piggies love analyzing data, so if you are bored, here’s the 104 page pdf of that study. I already saw the problems with the study and that is why I used the raw data and made my own percentages, however the newspapers don’t look very deep and that is where you got your percentages.
One particular item of note is on page 8, where the actual city of temecula has more jobs per household than the I-15 San Diego corridor as a whole, more than escondido, more than vista, but less than san marcos.
But the real problem with the study is dividing modern traffic counts into year 2000 census data in order to determine percentages. Using 2005 traffic paterns (which is where the 29k commuters numbers come from) then factoring those into census 2000 population figures for an area that grew at a rate as fast an any area in the country is just bad math. The used temec’s 2000 pop of 57k and murr’s as 44k, and similar innacurate numbers for the other sw county communities. All of the populations need to be roughly doubled. (they did however say that 40% of the commuters don’t go more than 30 miles, because I go one offramp away, I’ve commuted to another county). Another huge problem with saying only 39% of those that live in the city work in the city is that people with a commute of 5 miles, likely work in another city or unincorporated area. Both Scardey and I live in the unicorporated areas, of course I can wak to the city, I’m 150 yards from the city, but technically, I’m crossing municipal boundaries for not only work but gas and food. There are people who live in Poway, work in Rancho Bernardo and they technically don’t live in the city they work in, one is the City of S.D., while the other is the city of Poway.
But the real reason these so called fact are produced, these are produced by and for government agencies that want to support sales tax votes, these are the mass transit and carpool lane people. This is SanDag and Wrcog, these studies are designed for long term planning but also to create sound bytes for the media to write stories, helping the next ballot measure for their 1/2 cent sales tax. Paramount, you of all people know that you can only trust the government so much when it comes to justifying tax increases.
BTW, the forbes thing is not a sw county thing, it’s ratings are more about the region itself, I’ll give you that, an hour north, the riverside/san bernadino areas are horrible, bad air, bad commutes. The 91 is probably the worst freeway I know of.
If you have videotaped your commute in the rain, I can only say one thing, you need to move. You need to be happy and you aren’t. It is true that happy people tend to overlook things that other people don’t, guilty as charged. But the reverse is true, unhappy people tend to exaggerate the negative, then they start thinking everyone is siphoning their gas.
