A new era in affordable transportation

Photo by Steve Mouzon, Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati

Place-based transportation is key to helping economically struggling families, and until recently this idea has been underappreciated.

Transportation costs are greatly reduced when families have options—walking, bicycling, transit, car-share, bike-share, or simply driving shorter distances. Families save a lot of after-tax money—often $5,000-$7,000 a year or more—through what is called location efficiency. I coined the term Place Mobility, because placemaking is essential—not just location. Placemaking is the process of creating quality places that people want to live, work, play, and learn in1.

The Citizens Budget Commission highlighted the power of transportation affordable locations in a  of 22 cities.

New York, DC, and San Francisco—all of which have high housing costs—came out on top when housing and transportation (H+T) are combined and incomes are taken into account. The authors explain:

“The relatively low transportation costs combine with relatively high incomes to boost New York City’s overall location affordability. New York is the third most affordable city for a typical household, behind Washington, D.C. and San Francisco.”

Of the 22 cities, Philadelphia has the lowest absolute H+T costs, because relatively cheap housing combines with great transportation options.

Cities like Riverside, CA, Jacksonville, FL, and Phoenix, AZ—none particularly upscale in terms of housing—have high H+T costs due to the need for automobile travel for most trips.

Cities with high Place Mobility outperformed more car-dependent cities in every income category—from the very poorest to the solidly middle class.

For the poorest group (incomes of $10,500-16,000 depending on the city), affordability is, not surprisingly, a problem everywhere. It’s a bigger problem in car-dependent places. In Riverside, H+T costs average 139 percent of income for the lowest income category. Such a family would have a hard time making it, even with subsidized housing.

CBC’s data is derived from HUD’s —unveiled in November of 2013—which is changing the way the nation views affordability. This website, based on the  by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, has made it easy to view combined H+T costs anywhere across the nation.

We used to think about affordability mostly in terms of the percentage of income spent on housing—the rule of thumb is 30 percent is affordable. Families would “drive ‘til they qualify” for a home mortgage—go as far into the exurbs as necessary to find a cheap new house—and give automotive costs little consideration. When a family is removed from live-work-play-learn neighborhoods, that family's combined H+T costs rise—leading into a financial trap. Decades of transportation policies that favor high-speed automobile travel over other modes have helped to set that trap.

The following are some ideas that I think are important to the discussion:

Not just about cities

The suburbs—particularly the first-ring suburbs—have some of the greatest opportunities for expanding location affordability. Twenty-six million housing units were built in the post-World War II era of 1945 to 1965, predominantly of the small-lot, single-family variety. These houses are five to seven decades old—so they tend to be affordable—but most are still livable. Compared to later suburbs, postwar neighborhoods were built at higher densities and with and narrower streets. These neighborhoods are increasingly racially diverse. But they are still car-dependent—and thus have affordability problems—because the main roads are geared to automobile travel.

These main roads are commercial strips that could be retrofitted as complete streets with mixed-use buildings. That requires strategic placemaking, and there are many benefits for suburban municipalities from that process. Placemaking adds value to fading commercial strips, boosting the tax base and creating economic development. A stronger sense of place will make suburbs more appealing to key market segments. 

These strips could become new main streets for the postwar suburbs, providing a destination for walking and bicycling and the density to support better transit service. This strategy could add millions of homes in diverse, affordable, location-efficient neighborhoods to the nation’s housing stock.

Place-based housing policies

Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) determine where a substantial portion of the nation's subsidized housing is built. Across the US, such housing is often built in drive-only locations with no transit service. That can add many thousands of dollars to a household transportation budget, negating the cost savings from subsidized housing.

In Michigan, the LIHTC program steers the credits toward mixed-use centers, nodes, and corridors. That state has a simple solution: The website  is used as one of the criteria for issuing the credits. Walk Score, for those not familiar with it, provides a score from 0 to 100 for walkability of any location in the US. Michigan combines Walk Score with other place-based criteria—such as location in a central city and proximity to public transportation—that totals up to 50 percent of how tax credits are qualified.

Illinois has followed Michigan’s example in using Walk Score in qualifying LIHTC projects. This is just one example of how housing policy could improve affordability for low-to-moderate income residents.

Aligning poor and middle-class interests

In terms of transportation policy, the interests of the poor and the middle class have long been on separate tracks. Public transportation—in most cities this means the bus—is often viewed as a program for the poor. Without a broad political base transit systems are constantly squeezed for money. We spend relatively more on highways, on the other hand, because highways are viewed as the primary means of middle-class transportation.

Because our metropolitan regions have changed over time to require automobile travel, transportation costs are squeezing both the poor and middle class. Place Mobility is a way out of that trap.

In Kevin Klinkenberg's new book , planner Stu Sirota reports on his family's move to Baltimore. “The move from suburb to city allowed me to trade in my 50-minute daily driving commute for a 20-minute walking commute,” he says, and increased his options—if time is limited he could take the bus or taxi. “The move also made owning two cars completely unnecessary, so we downsized to one without any sacrifice in convenience. In the process, we found that this change was saving us over $8,000 annually.”

The more that middle-class families make that connection, the more affordable transportation becomes a priority. The poor tend to do better when their interests are aligned with the middle class.

Combining bike-ped and urbanism

Bicycle and pedestrian advocacy has become a huge grassroots movement, with more than 220 state, provincial, and local advocacy organizations that are members of the . Place-based planning and development is also a big trend— one that is led mostly by urbanists that are professionals in land-use and real estate.

Making communities more walkable is a bigger issue than sidewalks, crosswalks, and bicycle lanes. It depends on raising Walk Scores, which requires place-based development. Place-based development, in turn, requires reform of land-use practices. That demands popular support, which benefits from grassroots activism on the part of organizations like the members of the Alliance. Therefore, bike-ped activists and urbanists need each other. These two causes would be much stronger if they joined forces.

A meeting will be taking place at the CNU summit that will explore how urbanists can work with the Alliance.

This is an exciting time for transportation and affordability, location efficiency, and Place Mobility. If the suburbs and cities, policy-makers, professionals and grassroots activists, low-income and middle class Americans join forces, a new era could begin.

Note: CNU explored related topics at its transportation summit, , held in New York City, October 1-3, 2014. 

Robert Steuteville is editor and executive director of Better Cities & Towns.

• 1. Credit to Mark Wyckoff of Michigan State University