Transportation Spending by Low-Income California Households ...

would have paid with traditional auto insurance (Progressive Casualty
Insurance Company, 2000). Litman notes, however, that an individual
insurance company has little incentive to take on the costs of
implementing a new program with any of these three distance-related
strategies. Linking insurance costs more closely to distance may be more
feasible on a large scale: Litman states that “Mileage-pricing could be
implemented at the state, provincial, or federal level by simply specifying
in insurance law that the unit by which coverage is sold shall be distance
related.” Perhaps, in the future, programs such as the California Low
Cost Automobile Insurance Program could incorporate one of the
distance-based strategies described by Litman.
One final qualifier regarding vehicle-oriented strategies: Although
private vehicles provide many advantages over other forms of
transportation, there are those who will not be able to use a private
vehicle, including those who are too old, too young, or physically unable
to drive. A comprehensive transportation affordability strategy needs to
keep in mind the needs of these constituencies and pursue other options
as well as vehicle options.
Linking Home to Work via Paratransit and Other
Alternatives
“Paratransit” is an umbrella term that covers shuttles, vanpools, diala-ride
services, jitneys, and shared-ride taxis. Some paratransit services
operate at regularly scheduled times, others are on-demand, either by
phone or by hailing the vehicle on the street. Sometimes paratransit
services have a fixed route, sometimes they pick up passengers at several
locations to drop them off at one common destination (such as an
employer or the airport), and sometimes they provide individualized
door-to-door service. 25 These systems provide some of the scheduling
flexibility and geographic mobility of private vehicles with some of the
economies of scale of a public transit system.
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25 For a useful typology of paratransit services, see Cervero (1997), p. 15.
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