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.
Even in large metropolitan areas the higher cost areas tend to be in outlying neighborhoods with sprawling development, and the lower cost areas tend to be near active transit lines. While the government builds the roads, private individuals buy fuel, and maintain the automobiles that are needed to drive on them. Government decisions about community design and transportation investment affect personal pocketbooks. Among its recommendations, the report concludes that governments should invest in public transit, bicycle facilities and walkable neighborhoods and should stop investing in sprawl-inducing highway expansions that cost families more money. Seamless welded track is laid into these grooves.