Forbes reports on a new study that claims that residents of Houston face the most expensive commutes in the country. This is based on a study by the Brookings Institution, but commissioned by the notoriously anti-auto Surface Transportation Policy Partnership (STPP). Unfortunately, the study itself is not yet available on the web.
But it is interesting that having more money to spend on travel is portrayed as a bad thing. “What really takes a beating is your wallet,” says Forbes. Of course Houstonians spend more: they have more to spend.
Houston is one of the nation’s most affordable housing markets. If families don’t have to spend half of their income on housing, they have more money to spend on travel, clothing, food, and other things. But no one writes dire articles saying “the cost of clothing in Houston eats up a huge percentage of household costs.”
Instead, the focus is on driving, which STPP hates. Again, I don’t have this particular study, but the Antiplanner has shown that past STPP studies have used hypothetical costs of driving that are much higher than Americans actually spend. Meanwhile, when STPP considers the cost of transit, it only counts fares and not the transit subsidies that are typically four times as much as fares.
Having affordable housing means you have more choice over where you can live because you have enough money to commute further to work. Yet that doesn’t mean that Houstonians spend more time commuting. According to the Census Bureau, the average Houston commuter spends less than 26 minutes commuting each way. That’s less than residents of transit-intensive New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, or Washington. I suspect if we count the full cost of transit systems in those cities, commuting would be much more expensive than in Houston.
Still, the product resolves not only this concern. viagra online That is why more and more people suffering from erectile dysfunction, the trend is going to continue cheapest viagra prices in the future for Online pharmacy shopping. In some cases, men improve spontaneously without treatment within a year or two, and scar tissue development, sildenafil prescription which can lead to more pain and dysfunction. Low stress lifestyle – can’t emphasize this sildenafil pills enough.
But of course STPP spins things its own way. It is too bad that Forbes fell for the spin.
Update: The writer of the Forbes article, Matt Woolsey, comments:
“Please notice that I do mention the trade-off in housing affordability and household costs in my discussion of Houston and also in the way I explain the New York and San Francisco figures. Two other stories you should check out are my stories on the fastest growing suburbs and on the present American migration patterns in which I make the argument far more directly that restrictive zoning and housing affordability are among the chief reasons why people are moving away from traditional growth centers.”
That’s true and I should have mentioned it. However, in my own defense, the “beating to your wallet” quote is in the first paragraph while the discussion of housing costs is much lower down. My argument is that Houstonians don’t feel like transportation costs are beating their wallets (at least, not more than people anywhere else). Instead, they are choosing to spend more on transportation because they have more to spend, thanks to less land-use regulation that keeps their housing costs low.
I appreciate Woolsey’s other articles and just wish he hadn’t turned this one into another “autos are evil” report.
Having affordable housing means you have more choice over where you can live because you have enough money to commute further to work. Yet that doesn’t mean that Houstonians spend more time commuting. According to the Census Bureau, the average Houston commuter spends less than 26 minutes commuting each way. That’s less than residents of transit-intensive New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, or Washington.
Are you asserting, Randal, that if there was affordable housing near work, rational maximizing agents would still choose to live 40 miles away because they love to sit in traffic so darn much? Or are you asserting that agents choose to spend money on their car rather than on clothes, kid’s toys, food? Or are you asserting that the mode split in NYC, CHI, SFO, etc is so high that huge fractions of workers are stuck on the train?
No, of course you’re not. You’re surely pointing out that The lack of affordable housing drives up commute costs and times in older, dense cities.
But it’s curious why you are compelled to spin the Forbes findings, Randal. The article is explicit in stating that the monetized cost of sprawl is paying off for Houston:
The article should be trumpted! Everyone should read it! Randal’s assertions work on the ground! Just cut-paste the reporting, Randal, and don’t include this bit:
Simple, yet complex.
DS
DanS asks, “Are you asserting, Randal, that if there was affordable housing near work, rational maximizing agents would still choose to live 40 miles away because they love to sit in traffic so darn much?”
No, I wasn’t asserting that. However, there is something to it. Research by Patricia Mohktarian at UC Davis shows that commuters prefer to live around 18 minutes from work so they can keep their work and home lives separate. Houston commutes average 25 minutes, which is a lot less than 40 miles but not much more than Mohktarian says is the average preference.
DanS continues, quoting the article, “he study also found a very high correlation between cities that had extensive train systems and those in which households spent the least on transportation costs.”
But as I pointed out, the study almost certainly leaves out the subsidies to rail transit, which are huge. Adding in these subsidies and the cost of commutes in these cities would be much higher.
Pingback: More Bogus Statistics « Sit, Ubu, Sit! Good dog!
Randal, I can’t find the paper from my fellow alum Mohktarian you claim exists but didn’t cite.
And can you tell us whether the study leaves out the subsidies for homeownership, such as the home mortgage interest deduction? Does the study also consider public health costs from auto transportation? No? Hm. Does the study factor in the rail infrastructure expenditure ROI?
DS
Antiplanner, Several years ago I read an article in New Scientist about a travel time study that came to much the same conclusion as Mohktarian. The author’s of the study were an anthropologist and a historian. Literature reviews in their respective feilds led to the conclusion that 15-20 minutes was an almost universal commute time. It made no real difference whether the commuters were primitive or sophisticated, urban or rural, village or city. The only exception appears to be shopkeepers and artisans who often live where they work. Perhaps they have a unique psychology.
But the crucial point is that it is time dependent, not distance or money dependent. Which helps explain why drivers complain most about congestion and transit passengers complain most about trains running late.