Transportation Spending by Low-Income California Households ...

to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s (MTC’s) request for
both a menu of policy options to address transportation affordability and
ideas for further research on the topic.
Key Findings
Transportation is the third-largest budget item for low-income
households in California’s metropolitan areas.
For low-income households—roughly the poorest 25 percent of
households—only housing and food expenditures constitute larger
budget shares than transportation expenditures. For all other
households, transportation displaces food as the second-largest budget
item.
Low-income households allocate a slightly smaller proportion of
household expenditures to transportation than do other households.
Median annual transportation expenditures are $2,164 for lowincome
households, accounting for 13 percent of their household budget
(Table S.1). At the median, all other households spend $6,569 annually
on transportation, which comes to 15 percent of their budgets.
Cost appears to be a barrier to vehicle ownership among low-income
households in the Bay Area.
A key difference between low-income and higher-income households
is vehicle ownership rates. Two-thirds of low-income California
households own vehicles, compared to 90 percent of other California
households (Figure S.1). Vehicle access rates in the Bay Area indicate
that 73 percent of low-income households report having access to a
vehicle, compared to 94 percent of higher-income households. Similarly,
in the Bay Area, 53 percent of low-income workers and 70 percent of
higher-income workers drive alone to work. These differences suggest
that the costs of vehicle ownership and operation are prohibitive for
many low-income households. Among low-income households in
California that do own vehicles, vehicle-related expenditures averaged
$3,586—about 19 percent of their household budgets (Table S.1).
Some low-income households have very high vehicle expenditures; 10
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