In a recent study, Driven to Spend, by the Surface Transportation Policy Project and the Center for Neighborhood Technology, the average American household devotes 18 cents out of every dollar to getting around. In some metro areas, households are spending more on transportation than on shelter.
Most American families spend more on driving than on health care, education or food.
The most expensive places for transportation as shown in the Consumer Expenditure Survey provide little transportation choice as measured by the ratio of transit service to roads. Places where road systems dominate have higher transportation expenses. In metro areas with large transit systems families pay higher taxes to support these systems, but these taxes do not come close to outweighing the cost of driving. In analyzing various factors, the most powerful source of differences in household transportation spending is the spread-out development pattern commonly called sprawl. Sprawl increases costs by making automobile travel a necessity.