Gas Prices – Feeling the Squeeze

The red indicates the areas of the Baton Rouge MSA where residents spend over $3600 a year on gas in 2008.

As gas prices soar, families across America are feeling the financial pinch.  Using the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, gas prices from 2000 and 2008 are highlighted to show the monthly and annual impact on household budgets in metros nation wide.  For the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas, a shocking majority of residents are paying over $3600 a year for gas–a stark contrast to the $900-1800 price range these same neighborhoods enjoyed in 2000. What’s most interesting, however, in viewing the maps of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is that the money spent on gas decreases closer to the urban core.

With greater transit, bike lanes and pedestrian access, the highest price points (dark red) are only expereinced outside of the urban core.

This is especially true in New Orleans, where residents from Algiers to Metarie and everywhere in between, spend $900-1800 a year in gas. Yet in Baton Rouge, this demographic is significantly smaller, with most residents’ spending in the highest possible price point. New Orleans, with its compact development, dense populations, and expanding transit service, offers residents a multitude of mobility options, unlike Baton Rouge which has been developed to cater to a more suburban, car culture.  These development decisions don’t begin and end with gas prices either, they have a direct effect on the local economies.  For families who are financially strapped, bearing the burden of high gas prices to get to and from work is unavoidable in the Baton Rouge area.  This means that they are forced to give up other goods and services–food, entertainment, clothes, etc.  When the majority of a population’s spending power is effected by gas prices, its ultimately the local businesses and tax base that lose out.

View these maps and other data on the metro areas>