HTA-0583: Economic Charts — The Ugly Numbers

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Summary

Henry presents and discusses disturbing economic data and charts showing troubling financial trends.

Full Transcript

00:00
Oh, that's ugly. Boy, that's ugly. Not the chart itself, but the number. I don't know if you can read it there, but right there in the middle. Maybe your monitor is better than mine. San Francisco, number seven in traffic. Lyle is trying to tighten it up a little there. And 50, I believe it's something like 78 hours every year, San Francisco folks are tied up in traffic. How do we know that? Well, it's this man's fault.

00:30
Our guest is a bearer of bad tidings.

00:34
Would you introduce yourself and tell people what you do?

00:36
Sure, yes.

00:38
Great to meet everybody.

00:39
Henry, thanks for being here.

00:40
My name is Jim Bach.

00:41
I work with InterX Company up in Seattle, Washington.

00:43
And what do you guys do?

00:45
Well, we're no strangers to traffic up there.

00:46
We do traffic information software for car navigation and for departments of transportation.

00:52
So this guy, not personally, accumulated the traffic data, which is going to be released on September 27th,

01:00
next week by the Federal Highway Administration.

01:03
And we can't give you too many details because it's embargoed,

01:07
but we are going to give this little tidbit for you.

01:09
How's San Francisco doing on traffic since last year?

01:13
Well, actually, you know, most of the parts of the country, things are flat.

01:17
San Francisco is actually going to move up probably in the top five of the worst cities for traffic.

01:22
And, you know, that's not good for folks in San Francisco.

01:25
The average San Francisco traffic costs them about $1,000 a year and lost fuel, time, and productivity.

01:32
What happened?

01:33
Well, basically what's happening is what we're seeing is what's interesting is traffic tends to mirror the economy.

01:39
It's a bit of an economic indicator.

01:40
So the good news, bad news is when the economy is bad, traffic is not nearly as bad, right?

01:46
But that also means your 401k and your stock portfolio is not doing very good either.

01:50
So when traffic's worse, the good news is, well, people are working.

01:53
Employment is back, right?

01:54
Yeah.

01:55
And your investment portfolio is doing good, but that doesn't make you feel much better when you're on the roads every day.

01:59
So the strong tech sector in the Bay Area has really kind of helped buoy and keep the area going.

02:04
But unfortunately, that means things aren't necessarily as good for traffic as they are in other parts of the country where the economy is not nearly as good.

02:11
You guys accumulate traffic data, and then you send it out via what services?

02:18
How do people find out about traffic?

02:20
I've got a GPS that's got traffic on it.

02:21
It's a miracle.

02:23
Yeah, sure.

02:23
The key thing, well, it makes a really good traffic service for folks out there who are using apps like Navigon Mobile Navigator.

02:29
Even our app, Enrix Traffic, we have a free app for iPhone and Android, too.

02:33
Or cars like Ford Cars with Ford Sync.

02:35
Our Audi vehicles now in navigation have our traffic in it.

02:39
We update the traffic down to those devices every two minutes.

02:43
Because as current as you can deliver the data, the more reliable it's going to be for folks.

02:47
So how do you get the data, though?

02:48
So we actually get the data from actual vehicles and devices traveling the roads.

02:53
We actually, before the advent of the GPS smartphone, we started working with commercial fleets, UPS, taxi cab companies, right?

03:00
And we said, hey, if you provide us with some anonymous data about the location, heading, and speed of those vehicles, we'll provide you traffic information.

03:07
So you're crowdsourcing.

03:08
And so thus crowdsourcing was born five years ago.

03:11
And now we're starting to see more of these consumer devices coming into the mix.

03:14
Well, thank you very much for bringing us terrible news.

03:17
We'll get the details of it on September 27th.

03:20
But if you want to check out the app, it's INRIX.

03:24
You can Google it.

03:24
It's on iPhone.

03:26
It's really a cool app, and it's a wonderful service.

03:28
Marty, do you ever use anything like that to keep track of traffic?

03:33
Actually, I don't want to take BART most of the time.

03:36
Oh, you big show-off.

03:37
That's right.

03:38
You're a good man.

03:39
You have to be honest, Henry.

03:41
You have to be honest.

03:42
But, Jim, I wanted to let you know you might want to head over to Oakland

03:45
and give us some information on the traffic jam there.

03:47
There's a huge jam at the Oakland Coliseum.

03:50
So, Jim, I think you need to head across the bay.

03:51
There definitely is.

03:52
We do track those events because those have a huge impact, as you know, all too well.

03:56
Definitely.

03:56
And much more for you on Cron 4 News Weekend.

03:58
But before we get to that, we want to tell you about a programming note,

04:01
the Blue Angels and Fleet Week special right here.