...
written by Guy Ayers, Architect , August 10, 2009

Your analysis of the Omaha Immigration Office in the Summer 2009 issue had an interesting tidbit of information in the table on page 44 that I didn't find discussed anywhere else in the article. It said the average commute was 60 miles, and the average annual fuel use was 250 gal/occupant (I assume this is averaged over employees and visitors). If you assign 150 sf to each occupant, this means the cost of getting to and from the building is roughly equal to the operating cost of the building, or $5/sf. The building energy costs are roughly 1/3 of the operating costs, so this means the transportation costs are three times the building energy costs, and this doesn't include the construction cost of the parking lot (the cost of operating the parking lot I assume is included in the building operating cost).

This tends to reinforce my opinion that planners could probably do a better job "greening" buildings than architects - transportation and other infrastructure costs are a significant portion, if not the majority, of the cost of operating a building.