Interactive Map Shows Exactly How Much Car Emissions Have Grown Where You Live

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• Emissions haven't gotten worse in every urban area over the years, but that's the general trend according to this interactive map from the New York Times.
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• The evidence is compiled from a long-term study by Boston University and show that more emissions come from transportation than any other sector.
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• Encouragingly, it seems to show that areas that have made tackling emissions a priority-we're looking at you, California-have had an impact.

Using 38 years of detailed information from Boston University's Database of Road Transportation Emissions, the New York Times has put together an incredibly detailed interactive map showing how carbon-dioxide emissions from passenger and freight traffic have changed in the United States since 1990.

The data is valuable for people who live in these areas but also for anyone interested in how our cars and trucks impact the air we breathe, and that should be everybody. The Times notes that even as the electric grid has getting slowly cleaner, vehicle CO2 emissions have "remained stubbornly high."

And they remain "stubbornly high," unfortunately, because of cars. Based on 2017 numbers from the EPA, transportation makes up the biggest chunk of greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S. at 29 percent (electricity generation is second, at 28 percent). Breaking up those transportation emissions, the EPA found that light-duty vehicles make up 59 percent of the total, with medium- and heavy-duty trucks making up another 23 percent.

But those are the national numbers, and the data used in the Times's interactive map show breathing is different depending on where you are. Yes, emissions have been on the rise almost everywhere since 1990, but there's some good news hidden in the map as well, particularly in California, where regulations have had some effect controlling emissions.

San Francisco, for example, saw an increase of 16 percent in total emissions since 1990 but a 9 percent decrease in emissions per person in that same time frame. The numbers are similar in Los Angeles, with a 16 percent overall increase paired with a 2 percent per person decrease. Not all areas of California show even the per-person decrease, but metro areas in other states are, in general, worse. The Phoenix, Arizona, metro area, for example, has seen its overall emissions climb 291 percent since 1990, a per-person increase of 86 percent. Outliers like Rochester, New York, saw a decrease in both overall emissions (down 3 percent) and per-person emissions (down 7 percent) since 1990.

Boston University has been collecting the data used in this map for the past 38 years by using federal traffic data to calculate the emissions. The Times then added in the population data to arrive at the per-capita numbers.