Brownlea’s post office must be

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact5% picked this

   The new post office will have to be built in accordance with a demanding new

   Since this building code is citywide it affects town-center and outskirts equally. We need a factor that is better for town-center construction, worse for outskirts construction.

   5%
2. B

   Correct69% picked this

   If the new post office is built on the outskirts of town, it will require a parking lot, but if sited near the

   Why this is right

   This isn't much of a cost savings, but it's something! No other answer gives us a better option. Building a parking lot is definitely more expensive than not building a parking lot. On Weaken, we usually want to be able to say, Even though [evidence is true], still possible [anti-conclusion] is true, because [answer choice]. Even though it's cheaper to buy land on the outskirts (which is a big part of construction cost), it's still possible that building on the outskirts of town isn't cheaper, because if we build on the outskirts we'll also have to build a parking lot.

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   69%
3. C

   No Impact12% picked this

   If the new post office is built on the outskirts of town, current city bus routes will have to

   It's not clear that anything in this answer adds to "building costs", which is all we're analyzing. This conclusion isn't saying that it will be cheaper for the city to have the post office in the outskirts or that it will be cheaper to run / maintain the post office in the outskirts. It's only about how cheaply it can be built. Expanding city bus routes has nothing to do with "total construction cost" for a post office.

   12%
4. D

   No Impact14% picked this

   If the new post office is built on the outskirts of town, residents will make decreased use of post office boxes, with the result

   It's not clear that anything in this answer adds to "building costs", which is all we're analyzing. This answer is just making it sound like the post office might end up spending more money in their efforts to service a post office on the outskirts of town, but the argument is solely about the cost of constructing the new post office.

   14%
5. E

   Strengthens, if anything1% picked this

   If the new post office is built near the center of town, disruptions to city traffic would have to be minimized by taking such

   This is telling us something negative about building the post office in the city center, which is the opposite of what we want. It's not clear that having to do some work at night or on weekends would actually be more expensive than daytime work (in real life, you probably do have to pay workers more for those inconvenient hours), but even on a gist-y level, the fact that we're hearing about something challenging / hard / bad when it comes to building in the town center means this is nowhere near what we want (which is something that would make building in the town center cheaper than building on the outskirts).

   1%