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Following our coverage of alternative transportation we look next to unhealthy air days. This indicator brings us a simple breakdown of air quality in the metro. Each day, the Environmental Protection Agency rates the region’s air quality as “good” “moderate” “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and “unhealthy” we then tabulate the data, and represent each year by the percentage of days in each category.
Each year, the percentage of good days outnumbers the days in all other categories combined. The past few years (2012-2014) have been especially good, with good days being more frequent than usual (75%, 66%, 77%). Interestingly...
Continuing with our coverage of healthy people, we look next to alternative transportation. This indicator provides us with measurements of how many commuters use environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Since transportation is something that occurs all the time, commuting is used to have consistency in what kind of transportations we're specifically tracking. The forms of transportation tracked are carpooling, taking transit, bicycling, and walking. We tracked our data across the Portland metro, Oregon, Washington, and the US.
Carpooling is the most common form of alternative transportation. While it may appear less "healthy"...