Negative Economic Impact of Auto-Focused Communities

Employees who have no choice but to battle their way through congestion every day are less productive and more likely to change jobs.

Seattle is the seventh most expensive city in the nation for transportation expenses. The average Seattle resident spends $9,372 yearly on transportation. This equates to 20% of a resident's income.

There is an inverse relationship between increasing car and truck ownership and diminishing family savings. As families buy more cars and trucks (especially through credit financing), they have less money saved in their bank accounts and therefore less money to invest in home ownership."

Traffic jams cost U.S. businesses an estimated $40 billion each year and waste 2.2 billion gallons of fuel.

By 2000 the economic impact of car crashes in America had reached $230.6 billion a year-an average of $820 for every person living the U.S.! The economic costs come from lost workplace and household productivity, property damage, medical costs and travel delay costs.

Sprawl is expensive for taxpayers, as local governments strain their budgets to expand utilities, schools, fire and medical services and roads over large geographic areas.

If Americans used public transportation at the same rate as Europeans - for roughly 10% of their daily travel needs - the U.S. would reduce its dependence on imported oil by more than 40%, or nearly the amount of oil we import from Saudi Arabia each year.

It costs as much as 20 times more to support a passenger mile of auto traffic than one of bike traffic.

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