Click the map to enlarge
The New York Times yesterday posted the above map on their Website. With vacation season upon us and gas prices rising, everyone is concerned about how $4-a-gallon gas is impacted the wallets of American consumers, and you can see the full breakdown here.
As the map shows, the percent of income spend on gas is lowest in a few major metropolitan areas. The New York area is bathed in dark purple; Chicago and its surrounding environs is dark purple; Boston, Washington and Philadelphia complete the Northeast Corridor of purple; and the San Francisco Bay Area reveals similar results.
Not coincidentally, those are also the areas in this country with the best public transportation systems. We have, for better our worse, the MTA and New Jersey Transit; Boston has the MBTA; D.C. has Metro; Philadelphia has a comprehensive SEPTA system that links to New Jersey Transit; Chicago has the CTA; and Northern California has BART, CalTrain and MUNI.
Despite this obvious relationship between gas expenditures and public transit access, politicians — even those in public transit-rich areas — are still focused on oil issues. It’s no wonder then that Streetsblog is calling on politicians to change their focus to mass transit expansion.
2 comments
Its not that simple. Look at Seattle, Denver and Dallas. These three cities have limited transit infrastructure, but still show up as purple. I think the map mostly reflects per-capita income and spacing between settlements (Wyoming, Montana). Compare to the map here: Per-capita income in US counties, 2006 (PDF, page 1). Many of the purple counties (lowest gas percentage cost) are in the upper quartile of income.
As usual, commodity prices hurt the working poor more than middle-to-upper income households.
-Chris
Like Chris notes, people in the “purple” areas make more money so they spend a lower percentage on gasoline. In the major metro areas housing prices also take up a much larger percentage of income.