Tuesday, February 26, 2013

US Vehicle Miles Driven Have Sunk To A New Post-Crisis Low

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/vehicle-miles-driven-2013-2

The Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Commission has released the latest report on Traffic Volume Trends, data through December. Travel on all roads and streets changed by -2.9% (-7.0 billion vehicle miles) for December 2012 as compared with December 2011. The 12-month moving average of miles driven increased only 0.34% from December a year ago (PDF report). And the civilian population-adjusted data (age 16-and-over) has set yet another post-financial crisis low.

Here is a chart that illustrates this data series from its inception in 1970. I'm plotting the "Moving 12-Month Total on ALL Roads," as the DOT terms it. See Figure 1 in the PDF report, which charts the data from 1987. My start date is 1971 because I'm incorporating all the available data from the DOT spreadsheets.

 

 

 

The rolling 12-month miles driven contracted from its all-time high for 39 months during the stagflation of the late 1970s to early 1980s, a double-dip recession era. The most recent dip has lasted for 55 months and counting — a new record, but the trough to date was in November 2011, 48 months from the all-time high.

The Population-Adjusted Reality

Total Miles Drive! n, howev er, is one of those metrics that should be adjusted for population growth to provide the most revealing analysis, especially if we're trying to understand the historical context. We can do a quick adjustment of the data using an appropriate population group as the deflator. I use the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Civilian Noninstitutional Population Age 16 and Over (FRED series CNP16OV). The next chart incorporates that adjustment with the growth shown on the vertical axis as the percent change from 1971.

 

 

Clearly, when we adjust for population growth, the Miles-Driven metric takes on a much darker look. The nominal 39-month dip that began in May 1979 grows to 61 months, slightly more than five years. The trough was a 6% decline from the previous peak.

The population-adjusted all-time high dates from June 2005. That's 90 months — over seven years ago. The latest data, for December 2012, is 9.00% below the 2005 peak, a new post-Financial Crisis low. Our adjusted miles driven based on the 16-and-older age cohort is about where we were as a nation in January 1995.

Here is a closer look at the series since 2000, which gives a better look at 2012, a flatline that rolled over in the second half of the year.

 

 

About that Population Adjustment...

I've frequently been asked why I use the CNP16OV data for the population adjustment, often with the suggestion that it would make more sense to limit the population to licensed drivers. For openers, I don't know of a valid source for the driver-licensed population. Moreover, the correlation between license holders and actual drivers is not a reliable one. Many license holders in households do not drive, especially in their older years. According to Census Bureau data on gasoline sales (courtesy of Harry Dent's research on demand curves), dollars spent on gasoline peaks for people in their late 40s and falls off rather quickly after that.

In fact, I think there's a good case for using the Census Bureau's mid-month estimates of total population (POPTHM) rather than civilians age 16 and over for the population adjustment. The reason is that a portion of total miles driven is specifically to support children's needs (day care, schools, children's activities, etc.) and the needs of elders who might have licenses but no longer drive. Ultimately the division of miles driven by either population group (CNP16OV or POPTHM), while not a perfect match with drivers, is a consistent and relevant metric for evaluating economic growth.

Here is the same population-adjusted chart, this time with the total population f! or the a djustment. In the total-population adjusted version the latest data point of -7.67% also a post-recession low.

 

 

What about the impact of volatile gasoline prices? How much of a factor has that been in the trend? I'll close with an overlay of the population-adjusted miles driven and gasoline prices since the early 1990s.

 

 

As is readily apparent, the correlation is fairly weak over the entire timeframe (+0.30). And, despite the volatility in gasoline prices since the onset of the Great Recession, the correlation since December 2007 has been even weaker (-0.28). There are profound behavioral issues apart from gasoline prices that are influencing miles driven. These would include the demographics of an aging population in which older people drive less, continuing high unemployment, and the ever-growing ability to work remote in the era of! the Int ernet.

One particularly interesting trend was highlighted in a recent study on "Transportation and the New Generation" by the Frontier Group.

From 2001 to 2009, the average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) decreased from 10,300 miles to 7,900 miles per capita—a drop of 23 percent. [PDF source]

The DOT "miles driven" metric is also interesting to study in the context of gasoline volume sales, which I also update monthly:

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Monday, February 25, 2013

Sigma DP3 Merrill to ship in March, deliver distance macros for $999

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/sigma-dp3-merrill-to-ship-in-march-for-999/

Sigma DP3 Merrill to ship in March, deliver distance macros for $999

Sigma may have left us waiting on details for the DP3 Merrill's launch, but not for long. It just confirmed that its next crack at a small Foveon X3 camera will reach US shops in March, when it should cost the same $999 on the street as its Merrill siblings. You're mostly getting a change in optics with the DP3 variant: it brings in a 50mm (75mm with crop factor) f/2.8 lens that allows bright macro and telephoto shots without cozying up to the subject. As long as you can live with quirks like VGA-only video, the DP3 Merrill is ready to pre-order at the source link.

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Via: SlashGear

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Google Just Got An Ally In Its Cloud War With Amazon (AMZN, GOOG)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-expands-cloud-with-rightscale-2013-2

google compute engine

Google's Compute Engine, a cloud-computing service, just scored a significant new deal.

It signed up its first reseller, a company called RightScale, reports GigaOM's Barb Darrow, who broke the news.

RightScale offers what it calls a "cloud management platform." It helps an enterprise automate routine tasks, monitor usage and monthly costs, control security options, and so on.

RightScale works with other major providers of Internet-delivered computing power and storage, including Amazon, RackSpace, HP Cloud, and Windows Azure.

RightScale's product has always worked with Compute Engine since the cloud Google launched the cloud service with much fanfare in June. But now the company will also sell Google's cloud to enterprises, and hold their hands if things go wrong. That's a big deal for a lot of enterprises who want to know someone will always answer when they call.

Darrow notes that the bigger partnership comes just a week after Amazon launched a new service called OpsWorks, which basically competes with some of what RightScale does.

As Google gets more serious about its cloud, it has a chance to be some real competition for Amazon. No one knows how to run apps in the cloud better than Google. Plus, Google promises to be! both fa ster and cheaper than Amazon Web Services.

SEE ALSO: Amazon's Star Engineer Lives On A Gorgeous 52-Foot Yacht

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Here's The Sites That Are Really Benefiting From Mobile (DIS, P, FB, GOOG, AAPL, AMZN)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-mobile-audience-for-sites-2013-2

comScore has a new report on the state of mobile. In it, it reports which sites are getting "incremental" mobile users compared to the desktop. For comScore, an incremental user is one that is coming exclusively to mobile and not via the PC. In other words, it's an entirely new user. We've charted out the sites that are gaining the biggest number of mobile only users.

Chart of the day shows percent incremental audience via mobile for digital properties, february 2013

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Chromebook Pixel review: another impractical marvel from Google

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/chromebook-pixel-review/

DNP Chromebook Pixel review another impractical marvel

We've had a bit of a love / hate relationship with the Google Chromebook since the first one crossed our laps back in 2011 -- the Samsung Series 5. We loved the concept, but hated the very limited functionality provided by your $500 investment. Since then, the series of barebones laptops has progressed, and so too has the barebones OS they run, leading to our current favorite of the bunch: the 2012 Samsung Chromebook.

In that laptop's review, we concluded that "$249 seems like an appropriate price for this sort of device." So, then, imagine our chagrin when Google unveiled a very similar sort of device, but one that comes with a premium. A very hefty premium. It's a high-end, halo sort of product with incredible build quality, an incredible screen and an incredible price. Is a Chromebook that starts at more than five times the cost of its strongest competition even worth considering? Let's do the math.

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