{"id":5473,"date":"2011-07-27T00:10:50","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T07:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5473"},"modified":"2011-07-27T00:10:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T07:10:50","slug":"mass-transit-is-good-for-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/27\/mass-transit-is-good-for-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass Transit Is Good For America"},"content":{"rendered":"

For health reasons, I cannot drive.  Fortunately for me, Portland has one of the best, if not the best, public transit systems in the country.  For $30\/month, I can go almost anywhere almost anytime.  If I lived in an area without mass transit, I would have to choose to be a shut-in or to put myself and others at risk, by driving.  So mass transit is great for me, and it turns out that that it\u2019s great for America too.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"27MAX\"<\/a>One of the odder conceits in transportation policy debates is the widespread view that somehow transportation alternatives are the exclusive province of fancy yuppies, while poor people are all cruising around enjoying parking subsidies. The truth, of course, is that both cars and gasoline are expensive<\/a><\/font>:<\/font><\/p>\n

According to the report, the average cost of owning a car is just shy of $9,500. That may not sound like much until you realize the federal poverty level is $22,350 for a family of four<\/a><\/font>. One-third of low-income African-American households do not have access to an automobile. That figure is 25 percent among low-income Latino families and 12.1 percent for whites<\/strong><\/span>. Racial minorities are four times more likely than whites to use public transit to get to work.<\/font><\/p>\n

Yet the federal government allocates 80 percent of its transportation funding to highways.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em><\/span>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Based on the above estimate, owning a car, on average costs $791.67, far less that the $60 it costs most people for unlimited use Portland\u2019s public transit system.  Every person who rides causes no wear and tear to our highways, almost no pollution, and cuts down road congestion.  Everything about it is a plus.  Therefore, government ought to allocate a greater portion of federal resources to mass transit.<\/font><\/p>\n

Just FYI, the train pictured above is Portland\u2019s MAX, at the stop in my neighborhood where I usually board it.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For health reasons, I cannot drive.  Fortunately for me, Portland has one of the best, if not the best, public transit systems in the country.  For $30\/month, I can go almost anywhere almost anytime.  If I lived in an area without mass transit, I would have to choose to be a shut-in or to put […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-politics","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}