Calculating the Taxpayer's Real Expense

There is a discussion going on over at the Capricious Commuter about transportation funding resources. It was mentioned in a comment on a previous entry that 63% of the area's resources are going to transit when it only carries a limited amount of trips. But CC sets us straight by trying to calculate how much we spend all together on transit versus cars, not even counting all the parking garages.

So if we consider that, in 2005, the most recent year for which I have stats at arm’s length, Bay Area motorists drove nearly 58 billion miles, at AAA’s average U.S. operating cost of 52 cents a mile, that’s $30.2 billion to add to our transportation funding formula, and that still doesn’t include the purchase price of new cars.

That’s like a once-in-a-generation statewide transportation bond measure, but just for the Bay Area. We all, collectively and for the most part unwittingly, agreed to approve and finance that funding package.

So here’s the new math: $3 billion a year for transit, including fares paid by individual commuters, and $31.9 billion a year for the streets, roads and vehicles that operate upon them. That would be 8.5 percent of the Bay Area’s transportation spending.

My favorite comment, "We all, collectively and for the most part unwittingly, agreed to approve and finance that funding package." We only seem to complain when gas prices get a little higher.