This is the current state of global electric vehicle adoption:

• Last year was the first year that global electric-vehicle sales reached 10% of all car sales -- the total was around 7.8 million cars (see above chart)

• Fully-electric vehicles accounted for about 5.8% of all car sales in the US, 11% of all car sales in Europe, and about 19% of all car sales in China -- China is leading in this department

• The US saw 807,180 fully-electric vehicle sales last year -- Tesla remains the biggest EV maker in the world

Over the past few years, I have been writing about the fall off in public transit ridership that we have seen as a result of the pandemic. Most recently, I mentioned it in my predictions for 2023.

This topic doesn't seem to get a lot of air time, but it is a problem. Because the standard way to operate a transit system in North America is at a loss.

According to this recent WSJ article, the average fare recovery ratio across the US is somewhere around 1/3, with the remaining 2/3 of operating costs being covered by public money.

(Somehow Japan has figured out a way to make money on rail.)

During the pandemic, federal aid was disbursed in order to maintain service levels. The MTA in New York, for example, received $15.1 billion. But these aid packages will eventually run out, and

The headline, here, is that "the US is running short of land for housing." But if you read the article, you'll see that the headline should probably read, "the US has land-use restrictions in place that make it unnecessarily difficult to build enough new housing." Here's an excerpt:

Asking prices for homes in these new communities [the exurbs of Tampa] go as high as $900,000, in part because the land underneath is so valuable. That has a lot to do with land-use regulations.

Tampa’s zoning rules prevent developers from building anything larger than a single-family home in much of the city. When officials for Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, adopted zoning regulations in 1950, they said the measures were necessary to prevent overcrowding and traffic jams and would preserve the neighborhood character, all “with a view to conserving the value of buildings,” according to the regulations.

If all you can build are single-family homes, then you're going to need a lot more land compared to if you were allowed to build a bit higher and/or a bit denser. But it is a good way to ensure that supply remains somewhat scarce and that one is faithfully "conserving the value of buildings."

It is, however, worth mentioning that we have invented ways to use land more efficiently. The population density of Hillsborough County is somewhere around 1,200 people per square mile. The population density of Paris, on the other hand, is over 50,000 people per square mile.

This is the current state of global electric vehicle adoption:

• Last year was the first year that global electric-vehicle sales reached 10% of all car sales -- the total was around 7.8 million cars (see above chart)

• Fully-electric vehicles accounted for about 5.8% of all car sales in the US, 11% of all car sales in Europe, and about 19% of all car sales in China -- China is leading in this department

• The US saw 807,180 fully-electric vehicle sales last year -- Tesla remains the biggest EV maker in the world

Over the past few years, I have been writing about the fall off in public transit ridership that we have seen as a result of the pandemic. Most recently, I mentioned it in my predictions for 2023.

This topic doesn't seem to get a lot of air time, but it is a problem. Because the standard way to operate a transit system in North America is at a loss.

According to this recent WSJ article, the average fare recovery ratio across the US is somewhere around 1/3, with the remaining 2/3 of operating costs being covered by public money.

(Somehow Japan has figured out a way to make money on rail.)

During the pandemic, federal aid was disbursed in order to maintain service levels. The MTA in New York, for example, received $15.1 billion. But these aid packages will eventually run out, and

The headline, here, is that "the US is running short of land for housing." But if you read the article, you'll see that the headline should probably read, "the US has land-use restrictions in place that make it unnecessarily difficult to build enough new housing." Here's an excerpt:

Asking prices for homes in these new communities [the exurbs of Tampa] go as high as $900,000, in part because the land underneath is so valuable. That has a lot to do with land-use regulations.

Tampa’s zoning rules prevent developers from building anything larger than a single-family home in much of the city. When officials for Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, adopted zoning regulations in 1950, they said the measures were necessary to prevent overcrowding and traffic jams and would preserve the neighborhood character, all “with a view to conserving the value of buildings,” according to the regulations.

If all you can build are single-family homes, then you're going to need a lot more land compared to if you were allowed to build a bit higher and/or a bit denser. But it is a good way to ensure that supply remains somewhat scarce and that one is faithfully "conserving the value of buildings."

It is, however, worth mentioning that we have invented ways to use land more efficiently. The population density of Hillsborough County is somewhere around 1,200 people per square mile. The population density of Paris, on the other hand, is over 50,000 people per square mile.