Transportation Spending by Low-Income California Households ...

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transportation hubs may be another useful strategy. A third approach is to help households find quality child care facilities near their homes or workplaces. In this regard, publicity and support for existing county child care referral networks would be useful. An alternative method, currently used by the Contra Costa Department of Human Services, is to provide a shuttle specifically to transport children. 29 As a result of growing budgetary pressures, some school districts around the state have required that parents pay for their children to ride the bus to their public schools. Districts are not required by law to provide any transportation except for certain special education students, and provision of transportation services is locally determined. Districts that do provide transportation service can either use district buses, contract out for services, or provide vouchers for public transportation. The shift over time away from provision of transportation for students adversely affects low-income families with children. Legislation at the state level might be used to redress this shift. Alternatively, monies might be set aside to provide “scholarships” to families for whom school bus fees would impose a hardship. Increasing Household Income Directly A completely different approach to transportation affordability would be to increase household income directly with a tool such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). An income subsidy could offset some or all of the burden imposed by transportation costs. However, it must be understood that households may spend only part of this money on transportation. Unless the subsidy is quite large, it would probably not facilitate car purchases and therefore would probably not affect mobility substantially. Thus, the main effect would be to ease stress on the household budget. Using the tax system as the point of service might provide an efficient mechanism for identifying low-income people and sending them their income subsidy. In this sense, working through the tax system may be a more cost-effective way to address the financial wellbeing of low-income households than implementing a means-tested _____________ 29 Contra Costa Transportation Alliance (1999), pp. 6–11. 124
transportation assistance program. Although many low-income households do not file taxes, more have been filing since the EITC became available, and providing further incentives such as transportation credits might encourage even higher filing rates. One limitation to bear in mind is that income credits provide assistance only to those who are already employed. Those seeking employment would not find it any easier to cover their transportation costs. Another way to ease household budgets is to reduce taxes and fees, especially for transportation. This approach has already been used with the rollback of the vehicle license fee (VLF), which was intended to provide relief for California households regardless of income level. Our findings from the expenditure data indicate that a fair portion of the lowincome group will not benefit from the VLF rollback because they do not own cars (see Table 3.2). For those who do own private vehicles, state and local registration fees account for only 1 percent of total vehicle-related expenditures (Table 3.3). Therefore, changes in vehicle license fees are not likely to make a significant difference to low-income families. One way to lighten the tax burden on low-income households without reducing overall tax revenue would be to shift the current mix of revenue sources toward more progressive taxes. Transportation funding in recent years has shifted more and more toward local sales taxes, which are regressive; that is, low-income households pay a higher percentage of their income on these taxes than other households. Gasoline taxes, another common source of transportation funding, are also regressive, because low-income households spend a higher share of their income on gasoline than higher-income households do. However, Wachs (2003) states that fuel taxes are more equitable than sales taxes, as well as being more efficient. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter on policy options, these strategies can be used in combination with each other and in different proportions according to specific local needs. Balance should be sought between the gains to be made through efficiencies of scale from implementing statewide or regional projects and the gains to be made by 125
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Transportation Spending by Low-Inco
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Foreword Mismatches between jobs an
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Summary Transportation is an import
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Table S.1 Median Annual Transportat
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about 5 to 10 percent of the median
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providing discounted transit fares
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5. COMMUTE BEHAVIOR IN THE BAY AREA
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Figures S.1. Vehicle Ownership and
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4.3. Costs of Illustrative Within-C
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1. Introduction Costs associated wi
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of “welfare-to-work” transporta
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lays out policy options for address
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2. Data and Methods In this report,
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advantage to this approach is that
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3. Transportation Expenditures in M
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Table 3.2 Vehicle Use, Vehicle Owne
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Components of Vehicle-Related Expen
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inspection, and auto club membershi
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income households and the higher-in
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eport looks primarily at cost and n
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The results from Table 3.5 indicate
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variation in transportation costs w
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overall household expenditures for
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31 Table 3.9 Transportation Expendi
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Table 3.10 Comparison of California
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Table 3.11 Comparison of the San Fr
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Table 3.10 have lower expenditure f
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4. Costs of Illustrative Bay Area C
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0-300 301-600 601-1100 1101-6813 Ba
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Table 4.2 Place of Work Comparison
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Concord CONTRA COSTA SAN FRANCISCO
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Administration (FHWA) mileage rate
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49 Table 4.3 Costs of Illustrative
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participants who took transit or ca
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Table 4.4 Costs of Illustrative Wit
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commutes is $4,240, whereas the hig
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The results from this chapter seem
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5. Commute Behavior in the Bay Area
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We also looked at mode choice using
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longer for higher-income workers if
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Table 5.3 (continued) Low- Income H
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Table 5.5 depicts the share of the
Page 95 and 96: 73 Table 5.6 Mode Choice and Vehicl
Page 97 and 98: 75 Table 5.8 Mode Choice and Vehicl
Page 99 and 100: households report having access to
Page 101 and 102: Table 5.9 (continued) % Using Each
Page 103 and 104: • Marin to San Francisco: As with
Page 105 and 106: Table 5.10 Median Commute Durations
Page 107 and 108: 85 Table 5.11 Differences in Mode C
Page 109 and 110: Table 5.13 Mode Choice, Work Schedu
Page 111: trips, make more household-supporti
Page 114 and 115: only expenditures. Paying a given n
Page 116 and 117: improving service quality rather th
Page 119: Part II Policy Strategies and Areas
Page 122 and 123: potential social costs such as poll
Page 124 and 125: • Increasing income directly, to
Page 126 and 127: grants for developments that meet c
Page 128 and 129: make it easier for various entities
Page 130 and 131: pass.” 10 Perhaps discounts could
Page 132 and 133: free transit is most likely not app
Page 134 and 135: have fares based on the time of day
Page 136 and 137: hours for late night and graveyard
Page 138 and 139: credit ratings, assisting with insu
Page 140 and 141: would have paid with traditional au
Page 142 and 143: citizens. Rather, the question shou
Page 144 and 145: Facilitating Bicycling or Walking A
Page 148 and 149: allowing flexibility at the local l
Page 150 and 151: services, health care, drug treatme
Page 152 and 153: costs. Efforts to incorporate infor
Page 154 and 155: are differences) and by looking at
Page 156 and 157: Dataset Poor Low-Income Higher-Inco
Page 158 and 159: income, problems common to most hou
Page 160 and 161: or the Bay Area specifically. We us
Page 163 and 164: Appendix B Information on Specific
Page 165 and 166: We also excluded expenditures on bi
Page 167 and 168: Atlanta: Atlanta, GA MSA Miami: Mia
Page 169 and 170: 147 Table B.1 (continued) CES Metro
Page 171 and 172: Appendix C Sensitivity Analysis for
Page 173 and 174: 151 Table C.1 (continued) Poor Low-
Page 175 and 176: transportation expenditures constit
Page 177 and 178: Appendix D Methods Used for the Exa
Page 179 and 180: Bibliography American Automobile As
Page 181 and 182: Implications of Welfare Reform for
Page 183 and 184: Lucas, M., and C. Nicholson, “Sub
Page 185 and 186: Progressive Casualty Insurance Comp
Page 187: About the Author LORIEN RICE Lorien
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