Transportation Spending by Low-Income California Households ...

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costs. Efforts to incorporate information on monetary costs into surveys like these would help researchers nationwide to address affordability issues. 3 In addition to the option of expanding current data collection efforts, there is the possibility of fielding a unique survey with the specific goal of assessing the transportation needs of low-income households in the Bay Area. Such a survey could deliver all the benefits discussed above and might have several further advantages. First, researchers would be able to look at a broader spectrum of the lowincome population than is possible with welfare-to-work surveys. In addition, researchers could look at other subgroups of interest, such as the elderly, immigrants, disabled persons, children, and the homeless. Differences by race would be particularly interesting to examine, because nonwhites may have even less residential mobility than other low-income groups, because of discrimination in the housing market. A second advantage to fielding a specifically targeted survey is that it could ask more detailed questions on affordability issues than is usual for ordinary ridership surveys. Third, with a Bay Area survey, information could be analyzed at a local level of geography (in contrast to national datasets, which often have broad geographic identifiers). Such a survey could be supplemented by focus groups. Focus groups can illuminate the patterns seen in the survey data, even as the survey data can indicate how representative the insights gained from the focus groups are likely to be. Evaluation of Transportation Affordability Programs Another promising area for future research is to evaluate transportation affordability strategies implemented in the Bay Area. A wide variety of programs already exist in the region, and assessment of their success could identify profitable projects for expansion and _____________ 3 Another opportunity for adding cost information to larger transportation analyses would be to incorporate monetary costs into studies that identify geographic gaps in service (such as MTC’s Lifeline Transportation Network Report, 2001b), by assessing the fares needed to travel between the identified residential and job locations. 130
eplication. In addition, new transportation affordability programs could be established as demonstration projects. One example of a constructive program evaluation is the 2002 Lucas and Nicholson study of a car loan program in Vermont. This study found that loans to purchase cars were associated with statistically significant increases in both employment and earnings. One strength of Lucas and Nicholson’s results is that they rely on a comparison of groups that were randomly assigned to participate or not participate in the program (a “treatment” group and a “control” group). The City CarShare program is one program where random assignment might be applied in an evaluation setting. The program is highly innovative, and a thorough evaluation of it could benefit transportation and social services planners not just in the Bay Area but around the country. New pilot programs for projects that have not yet started could incorporate random assignment evaluations as part of the project design. The promise of a careful analysis might help attract funding from foundations to support the program. Certainly, random assignment is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a rigorous evaluation of a project, and other research methods may apply as well or better with respect to a given program. Regardless of the specific methods used, care should be taken to ensure that evaluations are rigorous. One caveat is in order: New programs often require a learning period in which to iron out the wrinkles. Evaluating a new program during this initial period may not give it a fair test. In this sense, some of the long-standing car loan programs in the area may be better candidates for evaluation at this time. Another project that would shed light on how to address transportation affordability would be an investigation of what happens to CalWORKs recipients once their transportation benefits expire. If an evaluation of this kind were set up with more than one “treatment” group, it might provide information on the optimal length of time for providing transportation benefits after a job is acquired. Although random assignment is helpful for creating a clean comparison between groups, a researcher might alternatively be able to investigate this issue by exploiting differences between counties in the length of benefits (if there 131
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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
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73 Table 5.6 Mode Choice and Vehicl
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75 Table 5.8 Mode Choice and Vehicl
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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 146 and 147: transportation hubs may be another
Page 148 and 149: allowing flexibility at the local l
Page 150 and 151: services, health care, drug treatme
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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