3/20/2000
Driven to Spend: Chapter Two: Where You Live Matters
While transportation is a major expense for most American households, the
cost of
getting around varies dramatically depending on where you live. To understand
how this works, we compared community expenditure patterns on different
geographical scales. First, we compared transportation expenses in U.S. metro
areas to metro areas in other countries. Then we compared different U.S. metro
areas to one another; this became the centerpiece of our analysis. Finally, we
looked at selected U.S. metro areas and compared transportation expenses from
neighborhood to neighborhood. These three different analyses resulted in very
similar conclusions.
Transportation Costs Americans More
When looked at on a global scale, differences in transportation expenditures
are striking. According to data collected by researchers Peter Newman and
Jeffrey Kenworthy, residents of American metro areas spend more on
transportation than their counterparts in European or in developed Asian cities.1 While data regarding household level expenditures are not available for
all countries, we can get a sense of those expenditures by looking at the
portion of each city’s Gross Regional Product (GRP) that goes to
transportation. Data for 1990 shows that in the United States, more than
thirteen percent of the GRP in the thirteen cities studied was used for
transportation expenses, while in Europe the portion was nearly forty percent
lower, at about eight percent. In developed Asian metro areas, just five percent
of GRP was used for transportation expenses. These expenses include both the
personal costs of driving and taking transit, and the shared costs of running
transit service.
|
Figure D. Americans Spend More to Get Around |
|
|
An average of representative metro areas
on each continent shows that
U.S. metro areas use a higher portion of the GRP on transportation. |
| [Source: An International Sourcebook of
Automoblle Dependency in cities, 1960 -1990] |
The Most Expensive U.S. Metropolitan Areas
Our analysis of the most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer
Expenditure Survey of 28 major metro areas shows that households devote the
highest portion of their household budget to transportation in Houston, Atlanta,
Dallas-Fort Worth, and Miami. (See Table 2) In ranking the most expensive places
for personal transportation, we used the share of total expenditures devoted to
transportation as the most accurate way to compare regions.2 The Consumer
Expenditure Survey is limited to the 28 Metropolitan Statistical Areas listed;
data are not available for other metro areas.
Table 2. Household Spending on Transportation in 28
Metropolitan Areas
|
Rank |
Metro Area |
Transportation Expenditures |
as Percent of Total |
|
1 |
Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, TX |
$8,840 |
22.1% |
|
2 |
Atlanta, GA |
$8,513 |
21.7% |
|
3 |
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX |
$8,717 |
19.7% |
|
4 |
Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL |
$6,684 |
19.0% |
|
5 |
Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint, MI |
$6,710 |
18.8% |
|
6 |
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI |
$8,683 |
18.4% |
|
7 |
Phoenix, AZ |
$6,826 |
18.2% |
|
8 |
Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City, PA-NJ-DE-MD |
$6,904 |
18.1% |
|
9 |
Kansas City, MO-KS |
$6,489 |
18.1% |
|
10 |
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL |
$5,864 |
17.8% |
|
11 |
Anchorage, AK |
$8,770 |
17.7% |
|
12 |
St. Louis, MO-IL |
$6,489 |
17.6% |
|
13 |
Cleveland-Akron, OH |
$6,384 |
17.5% |
|
14 |
Pittsburgh, PA |
$6,331 |
17.5% |
|
15 |
Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County, CA |
$7,224 |
17.4% |
|
16 |
Denver-Boulder-Greeley, CO |
$7,361 |
17.2% |
|
17 |
Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, WA |
$7,387 |
17.1% |
|
18 |
Portland-Salem, OR-WA |
$6,848 |
16.8% |
|
19 |
Cincinnati-Hamilton, OH-KY-IN |
$6,145 |
16.7% |
|
20 |
Milwaukee-Racine, WI |
$5,800 |
16.0% |
|
21 |
San Diego, CA |
$6,319 |
15.8% |
|
22 |
Washington, DC-MD-VA |
$7,207 |
15.4% |
|
23 |
Boston, MA-NH |
$5,788 |
15.2% |
|
24 |
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA |
$7,150 |
15.1% |
|
25 |
Chicago-Gary-Kenosha, IL-IN-WI |
$5,436 |
14.9% |
|
26 |
Baltimore, MD |
$5,236 |
14.7% |
|
27 |
New York-No. New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-CT-PA |
$5,956 |
14.5% |
|
28 |
Honolulu, HI |
$6,136 |
14.4% |
In 1997 and 1998, the average Houston area household devoted 22 cents out of
every dollar it spent annually to transportation, spending well over $8,800 per
year to get around. The overwhelming majority of these expenses was for
automobiles: $8,740 was spent annually on car-related expenses. Families in
Atlanta spent almost 22 cents out of every dollar, while those in Dallas-Fort
Worth used almost 20 cents out of every dollar to pay for transportation. The
three least expensive metro areas in the survey were Baltimore, New York and
Honolulu, where households used less than 15 cents of each dollar they spent for
transportation, spending between $5,236 and $6,136 per year. In these areas, a
majority of the expenses went for vehicles as well, but a slightly larger
portion went for other modes. Transportation expenditures in the three most
expensive areas were almost one-third greater than in the three least expensive
areas.
Households in the three top ranked metro areas spent more on transportation
than on shelter. Households in Houston paid $2,528 more than the national
average for transportation, and paid just $145 less than the national average
for housing. The relationship between housing and transportation cost is
explored more fully in Chapter Four.
The Most Expensive Neighborhoods
Transportation costs also vary widely within metro areas. This can be seen
most easily by looking at the biggest expense category, how much households
spend on vehicles.
The costs of owning and operating a car in selected metro areas are
illustrated in Figures E through G, for Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
These figures show that, on average, households in some places spend more than
twice as much on owning and operating automobiles than households in other
places. These differences are only partially explained by different income
levels: Some of the neighborhoods with the highest incomes also have the lowest
transportation spending.
These figures were calculated using vehicle ownership and usage rates per
household as predicted by the Location Efficiency Value (LEV) model. The model
uses a set of community characteristics to estimate how many cars an average
household owns, how far that household drives, and how much that household
spends on transportation.3 To ensure the accuracy of the model, researchers
compared its estimates to automobile ownership data from the Census Bureau, and
odometer readings from the Illinois EPA and the California Bureau of Automotive
Repair. The models explained 93 percent of the variation in both average number
of vehicles owned and average number of miles driven within the area analyzed.
The methodology and results were also validated by a number of peer reviewers.4
See Chapter Four, for more on Location Efficiency.
Figures E, F, & G - How Much Does It Cost To
Drive?
The green areas on these maps show areas in which the average household
spends less on driving. The red and orange areas depict
neighborhoods in which the average household typically spends more on
driving.
[Source: CNT LEV Model 1998. For more information,
see Appendix A] |
|
 
|
| In the Chicago region, (Figure E) households of average
income in outer-ring suburbs spend more than twice as much per year, or
242 percent more, driving their cars than do families living in the city
along transit lines. For example, an average family living in Chicago’s
Edgewater neighborhood spends $4,000 yearly on getting around, while the
average family in Schaumburg, Illinois spends $6,800. In the Bay Area,
residents of the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco spend an
average of just $3,800 per year on automobiles, while residents of the
suburban city of Livermore spend an average of $6,300 per year. |
|
 
|
| Significant differences in car costs also exist between
suburbs of different kinds. Outer suburbs with limited transit service
exhibit significantly higher average household car costs than suburbs
closer to the urban core with good transit service and mixed-use
development. These lower-cost suburbs are also places with activity
centers, where shops, workplaces and other amenities are in close
proximity to each other and to residential areas. The cost maps for
Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco do not take into account the
transit expenditures of households. However, the low expense associated
with transit indicates that higher transit costs would only partially
offset savings from decreased auto dependence. |
|
|
Results from all three levels of analysis – international, U.S. metro
areas, and neighborhood to neighborhood – show that household transportation
budgets vary greatly based on where a household is located. In the next chapter
we’ll examine the reasons for this.
| Transit: Slightly Higher Taxes Result in Big
Personal Savings
In metro areas with large transit systems, such as New York, families
do pay higher taxes to support these systems, and some of these taxes
are not counted by the Consumer Expenditure Survey as transportation
expenditures. But these taxes do not come close to outweighing the
almost $2,900 less that New Yorkers pay for transportation than the
average Houston family.
STPP took a closer look at all public spending on transit in both New
York and Houston. Public spending on transit in 1998 amounted to about
$5.1 billion in New York, or $655 per household. It was just $413
million in Houston, or $250 per household. In New York, transit costs
about $400 per household per year more than it does in Houston, but even
after accounting for this difference, Houston families are still paying
$2,500 more per year for transportation, even when the full cost of
transit is included. |
The Surface Transportation Policy Project is a nationwide network of more than 800
organizations, including planners, community development organizations, and advocacy groups,
devoted to improving the nation’s transportation system.
|
STPP
