ACT Reading Passage

In today’s idea-driven economy, the cost of time is what really matters. With the constant pressure to innovate, it makes little sense to waste countless collective hours commuting. So, the most efficient and productive regions are those in which people are thinking and working—not sitting in traffic.The auto-dependent transportation system has reached its limit in most major cities and megaregions. Commuting by car is among the least efficient of all our activities—not to mention among the least enjoyable, according to detailed research by the Nobel Prize–winning economist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues. Though one might think that the economic crisis beginning in 2007 would have reduced traffic (high unemployment means fewer workers traveling to and from work), the opposite has been true. Average commutes have lengthened, and congestion has gotten worse, if anything. The average commute rose in 2008 to 25.5 minutes, “erasing years of decreases to stand at the level of 2000, as people had to leave home earlier in the morning to pick up friends for their ride to work or to catch a bus or subway train,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which collects the figures. And those are average figures. Commutes are far longer in the big West Coast cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco and the East Coast cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In many of these cities, gridlock has become the norm, not just at rush hour but all day, every day.The costs are astounding. In Los Angeles, congestion eats up more than 485 million working hours a year; that’s seventy hours, or nearly two weeks, of full-time work per commuter. In D.C., the time cost of congestion is sixty-two hours per worker per year. In New York it’s forty-four hours. Average it out, and the time cost across America’s thirteen biggest city-regions is fifty-one hours per worker per year. Acrossthe country, commuting wastes 4.2 billion hours of work time annually—nearly a full workweek for every commuter. The overall cost to the U.S. economy is nearly $90 billion when lost productivity and wasted fuel are taken into account. At the Martin Prosperity Institute, we calculate that every minute shaved off America’s commuting time is worth $19.5 billion in value added to the economy. The numbers add up fast: five minutes is worth $97.7 billion; ten minutes, $195 billion; fifteen minutes, $292 billion.It’s ironic that so many people still believe the main remedy for traffic congestion is to build more roads and highways, which of course only makes the problem worse. New roads generate higher levels of “induced traffic,” that is, new roads just invite drivers to drive more and lure people who take mass transit back to their cars. Eventually, we end up with more clogged roads rather than a long-term improvement in traffic flow.The coming decades will likely see more intense clustering of jobs, innovation, and productivity in a smaller number of bigger cities and city-regions. Some regions could end up bloated beyond the capacity of their infrastructure, while others struggle, their promise stymied by inadequate human or other resources.
The passage most strongly suggests that researchers at the Martin Prosperity Institute share which assumption?

• Employees who work from home are more valuable to their employers than employees who commute.
• Employees whose commutes are shortened will use the time saved to do additional productive work for their employers.
• Employees can conduct business activities, such as composing memos or joining conference calls, while commuting.
• Employees who have lengthy commutes tend to make more money than employees who have shorter commutes.

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.1

CCSS.RI.11-12.1

CCSS.RI.8.1

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

In today’s idea-driven economy, the cost of time is what really matters. With the constant pressure to innovate, it makes little sense to waste countless collective hours commuting. So, the most efficient and productive regions are those in which people are thinking and working—not sitting in traffic.The auto-dependent transportation system has reached its limit in most major cities and megaregions. Commuting by car is among the least efficient of all our activities—not to mention among the least enjoyable, according to detailed research by the Nobel Prize–winning economist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues. Though one might think that the economic crisis beginning in 2007 would have reduced traffic (high unemployment means fewer workers traveling to and from work), the opposite has been true. Average commutes have lengthened, and congestion has gotten worse, if anything. The average commute rose in 2008 to 25.5 minutes, “erasing years of decreases to stand at the level of 2000, as people had to leave home earlier in the morning to pick up friends for their ride to work or to catch a bus or subway train,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which collects the figures. And those are average figures. Commutes are far longer in the big West Coast cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco and the East Coast cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In many of these cities, gridlock has become the norm, not just at rush hour but all day, every day.The costs are astounding. In Los Angeles, congestion eats up more than 485 million working hours a year; that’s seventy hours, or nearly two weeks, of full-time work per commuter. In D.C., the time cost of congestion is sixty-two hours per worker per year. In New York it’s forty-four hours. Average it out, and the time cost across America’s thirteen biggest city-regions is fifty-one hours per worker per year. Acrossthe country, commuting wastes 4.2 billion hours of work time annually—nearly a full workweek for every commuter. The overall cost to the U.S. economy is nearly $90 billion when lost productivity and wasted fuel are taken into account. At the Martin Prosperity Institute, we calculate that every minute shaved off America’s commuting time is worth $19.5 billion in value added to the economy. The numbers add up fast: five minutes is worth $97.7 billion; ten minutes, $195 billion; fifteen minutes, $292 billion.It’s ironic that so many people still believe the main remedy for traffic congestion is to build more roads and highways, which of course only makes the problem worse. New roads generate higher levels of “induced traffic,” that is, new roads just invite drivers to drive more and lure people who take mass transit back to their cars. Eventually, we end up with more clogged roads rather than a long-term improvement in traffic flow.The coming decades will likely see more intense clustering of jobs, innovation, and productivity in a smaller number of bigger cities and city-regions. Some regions could end up bloated beyond the capacity of their infrastructure, while others struggle, their promise stymied by inadequate human or other resources.
As used in line 38, “intense” most nearly means

• emotional
• concentrated
• brilliant
• determined

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.4

CCSS.RI.9-10.4

CCSS.RL.11-12.4

CCSS.RL.8.4

CCSS.RL.9-10.4

In 1996, a loggerhead turtle called Adelita swam across 9,000 miles from Mexico to Japan, crossing the entire Pacific on her way. Wallace J. Nichols tracked this epic journey with a satellite tag. But Adelita herself had no such technology at her disposal. How did she steer a route across two oceans to find her destination?Nathan Putman has the answer. By testing hatchling turtles in a special tank, he has found that they can use the Earth’s magnetic field as their own Global Positioning System (GPS). By sensing the field, they can work out both their latitude and longitude and head in the right direction.Putman works in the lab of Ken Lohmann, who has been studying the magnetic abilities of loggerheads for over 20 years. In his lab at the University of North Carolina, Lohmann places hatchlings in a large water tank surrounded by a large grid of electromagnetic coils. In 1991, he found that the babies started in the opposite direction if he used the coils to reverse the direction of the magnetic field aroundthem. They could use the field as a compass to get their bearing.Later, Lohmann showed that they can also use the magnetic field to work out their position. For them, this is literally a matter of life or death. Hatchlings born off the sea coast of Florida spend their early lives in the North Atlantic gyre, a warm current that circles between North America and Africa. If they’re swept towards the cold waters outside the gyre, they die. Their magnetic sense keeps them safe.Using his coil-surrounded tank, Lohmann could mimic the magnetic field at different parts of the Earth’s surface. If he simulated the field at the northern edge of the gyre, the hatchlings swam southwards. If he simulated the field at the gyre’s southern edge, the turtles swam west-northwest. These experiments showed that the turtles can use their magnetic sense to work out their latitude—their position on a north-south axis. Now, Putman has shown that they can also determine their longitude—their position on an east-west axis.He tweaked his magnetic tanks to simulate the fields in two positions with the same latitude at opposite ends of the Atlantic. If the field simulated the west Atlantic near Puerto Rico, the turtles swam northeast. If the field matched that on the east Atlantic near the Cape Verde Islands, the turtles swam southwest. In the wild, both headings would keep them within the safe, warm embrace of the North Atlantic gyre.Before now, we knew that several animal migrants, from loggerheads to reed warblers to sparrows, had some way of working out longitude, but no one knew how.By keeping the turtles in the same conditions, with only the magnetic fields around them changing, Putman clearly showed that they can use these fields to find their way. In the wild, they might well also use other landmarks like the position of the sea, sun and stars.Putman thinks that the turtles work out their position using two features of the Earth’s magnetic field that change over its surface. They can sense the field’s inclination, or the angle at which it dips towards the surface. At the poles, this angle is roughly 90 degrees and at the equator, it’s roughly zero degrees. They can also sense its intensity, which is strongest near the poles and weakest near the Equator. Different parts of the world have unique combinations of these two variables. Neither corresponds directly to either latitude or longitude, but together, they provide a “magnetic signature” that tells the turtle where it is.
The passage most strongly suggests that Adelita used which of the following to navigate her 9,000-mile journey?

• The current of the North Atlantic gyre
• Cues from electromagnetic coils designed by Putman and Lohmann
• The inclination and intensity of Earth’s magnetic field
• A simulated “magnetic signature” configured by Lohmann

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RI.8.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

In 1996, a loggerhead turtle called Adelita swam across 9,000 miles from Mexico to Japan, crossing the entire Pacific on her way. Wallace J. Nichols TRACKED this epic journey with a satellite tag. But Adelita herself had no such technology at her disposal. How did she steer a route across two oceans to find her destination?
As used in line 2, “tracked” most nearly means

• searched for
• traveled over
• followed
• hunted

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.4

CCSS.RI.8.4

CCSS.RI.9-10.4

CCSS.RL.11-12.4

CCSS.RL.9-10.4

He tweaked his magnetic tanks to simulate the fields in two positions with the same latitude at opposite ends of the Atlantic. If the field simulated the west Atlantic near Puerto Rico, the turtles swam northeast. If the field matched that on the east Atlantic near the Cape Verde Islands, the turtles swam southwest. In the wild, both headings would keep them within the safe, warm embrace of the North Atlantic gyre.Before now, we knew that several animal migrants, from loggerheads to reed warblers to sparrows, had some way of working out longitude, but no one knew how.By keeping the turtles in the same conditions, with only the magnetic fields around them changing, Putman clearly showed that they can use these fields to find their way. In the wild, they might well also use other landmarks like the position of the sea, sun and stars. Why was reed warblers to sparrows, added to the passage?

• contrast the loggerhead turtle’s migration patterns with those of other species.

• provide examples of species that share one of the loggerhead turtle’s abilities.

• suggest that most animal species possess some ability to navigate long distances.

• illustrate some ways in which the ability to navigate long distances can help a species.

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RI.8.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

For one month after they left the nest, I led my four young ravens at least once and sometimes several times a day on thirty-minute walks. During these walks, I wrote down everything in their environment they pecked at. In the first sessions, I tried to be teacher. I touched specific objects—sticks, moss, rocks—and nothing that I touched remained untouched by them. They came to investigate what I had investigated, leading me to assume that young birds are aided in learning to identify food from the parents’ example. They also, however, contacted almost everything else that lay directly in their own paths. They soon became more independent by taking their own routes near mine. Even while walking along on their own, they pulled at leaves, grass stems, flowers, bark, pine needles, seeds, cones, clods of earth, and other objects they encountered. I wrote all this down, converting it to numbers. After they were thoroughly familiar with the background objects in these woods and started to ignore them, I seeded the path we would later walk together with objects they had never before encountered. Some of these were conspicuous food items: raspberries, dead meal worm beetles, and cooked corn kernels. Others were conspicuous and inedible: pebbles, glass chips, red winterberries. Still others were such highly cryptic foods as encased caddisfly larvae and moth cocoons. The results were dramatic.The four young birds on our daily walks contacted all new objects preferentially. They picked them out at a rate of up to tens of thousands of times greater than background or previously contacted objects. The main initial criterion for pecking or picking anything up was its novelty. In subsequent trials, when the previously novel items were edible, they became preferred and the inedible objects became “background” items, just like the leaves, grass, and pebbles, even if they were highly conspicuous. These experiments showed that ravens’ curiosity ensures exposure to all or almost all items in the environment.
According to the experiment, whether the author’s ravens continued to show interest in a formerly new object was dictated primarily by whether that object was

• edible
• plentiful
• conspicuous.
• natural

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

A subway system is expanded to provide service to a growing suburb. A bike-sharing program is adopted to encourage nonmotorized transportation. 1 To alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area, stoplight timing is coordinated. When any one of these changes 2 occur, it is likely the result of careful analysis conducted by transportation planners.
Which choice best maintains the sentence pattern already established in the paragraph?

• NO CHANGE
• Coordinating stoplight timing can help alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area.
  Coordinating stoplight timing can help alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area.
• Stoplight timing is coordinated to alleviate rush hour traffic jams in a congested downtown area.
• In a congested downtown area, stoplight timing is coordinated to alleviate rush hour traffic jams.

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.7

CCSS.RI.11-12.7

CCSS.RL.11-12.7

CCSS.RL.8.5

CCSS.RL.9-10.7

When any one of these changes 2 occur, it is likely the result of careful analysis conducted by transportation planners. Choose the correct grammatical structure for the underlined portion.

• NO CHANGE

• occur, they are

• occurs, they are

• occurs, it is

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.3

CCSS.RI.11-12.5

CCSS.RI.8.3

CCSS.RI.9-10.3

CCSS.RI.9-10.5

The work of transportation planners generally includes evaluating current transportation needs, assessing the effectiveness of existing facilities, and improving those facilities or 3 they design new ones. Choose the correct grammatical structure for the underlined portion.

• No Change

• to design

• designing

• design

Most transportation planners work in or near cities, 4 but some are employed in rural areas. Say, for example, a large factory is built on the outskirts of a small town. Traffic to and from that location would increase at the beginning and end of work shifts. Choose the correct grammatical structure for the underlined portion.

• no change

• where job opportunities are more plentiful.

• nd the majority are employed by government agencies.

• DELETE the underlined portion and end the sentence with a period.

Tags

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2