Transportation Spending by Low-Income California Households ...

commutes analyzed in this chapter are likely to take the most time
because of multiple transfers. If this is the case, then data on these
commutes may not show up in the expenditure data because workers are
not willing to spend that much time commuting.
In this chapter, we estimate the costs of example commutes
throughout the nine MTC counties. We find substantial variation in
these costs, but generally the estimates confirm the finding from Chapter
3 that traveling by private vehicle is more expensive than traveling by
public transit. Clearly, mode choice has important implications for
transportation costs and expenditures. The next chapter investigates
differences in mode choice across income groups, among households in
the Bay Area.
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