Sumner Shortcuts

The Center for Neighborhood Technology has a fun new website feature they call the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index.

It’s an interactive map that you can navigate and manipulate in the same way you would a Google Map. But it’s so much more than just a map… it’s also the stuff of nightmares for many nights to come… horrible, spine-tingling nightmares.

Why?  Because this map shows you the average annual gasoline spending per household.  Here’s the map for 2000:

The print is a little small, so let me explain:  you’re looking at Sumner County.  The yellow parts of the map are where the average annual household gas spending is pretty low, $0-$1600.  The light pink–the outlying rural areas–are the next step up on the spending ladder, coming in at $1600-$2400 a year on gas.  The darker the pink, according to the legend, the more dollars spent on gas in a year.  Red–the universal color for shock, fear, and death–would be areas where the average household spent more than $3800 per year on gas.

Now, you may be thinking, “Gee, that’s not all that bad or scary afterall.”

And you’d be right.

But you haven’t seen 2008’s map yet.  Cue the theme from Psycho:

Holy crap!!

Yes… if you’re just now realizing it… the entire purpose of this article was to depress you.

And maybe make you think twice about stopping by Sumner Shortcuts to learn where the cheapest gas prices are the next time you’re headed out to fill up.

Geez, at the rate we’re going, I don’t want to know what that map will look like for 2009 and beyond.  It’s going to get ugly.