Los Angeles marked Transportation Freedom Day last week. What's that? It's the day when the typical median-income family has earned enough money to cover transportation costs for the entire year. Your basic middle-class L.A. household spends about $8,600 a year on gas, insurance, parking and vehicle maintenance, according to the California Public Interest Research Group, a watchdog organization. That compares with about $8,000 for the average U.S. family and represents more than 20% of most people's annual expenditures.
"It's an eye-opener how burdensome transportation is for most families," said Erin Steva, transportation advocate for CalPIRG. "People are spending more for this than they do for food, clothing and healthcare."
Yet what are we doing to make public transportation a more convenient and practical alternative for people? Not enough. ... it's almost as if the dozens of entities that constitute the region's public-transit network are conspiring to make the system as unwelcoming as possible.
LA Times, March 23, 2010
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