Saving Energy While Liberating the Poor

Last week, the Antiplanner argued that transit is going extinct and, rather than fight this trend, regional officials should find ways to smooth the transition. One way of doing so is to improve the mobility of low-income workers.

Transit advocates love to use phrases like oil dependency and auto dependency to suggest that automobiles are environmental disasters that have reduced our freedom. In fact, the 2015 National Transit Database shows that the only transit systems use less energy per passenger mile than driving are those in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco-Oakland, Portland, and Honolulu, while automobiles have liberated Americans, giving them far more mobility and economic opportunities than the people of any other country.

Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys the benefits of this liberation. According to the 2015 American Community Survey, about 5 million workers who take transit to work live in households with either no or one car. About 2 million of those are in New York City and most of them presumably choose to live without cars, but it may be reasonable to estimate that about 2 to 3 million workers nationwide take transit because they can’t afford a car.

In the long run, most of these people will have access to affordable, shared, driverless cars. In the short run, however, as transit systems shrink, many of these people will lose their subsidized transportation.

One solution might be to increase transit subsidies. But a better solution is to liberate low-income people by providing them with cars. Right now, transit agencies spend more than $5 per transit trip of which rider fares cover only about $1. That means someone who takes transit to and from work 250 days a year costs taxpayers about $2,000 a year. For two years’ worth of this cost, transit agencies could provide customers with $4,000 that they could use to buy a good used car.
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If these car purchases coincided with reductions in transit services, the result would be a net energy savings in most cities other than the ones listed above. Of course, once they had access to a car, people would probably use them for more than just getting to and from work. But the net social benefits of increased mobility among low-income people outweigh any energy costs of that mobility.

This is not a new or crazy idea. There are wheels-to-work programs all over the country providing low-income people with loans, small grants, or free or discounted used cars to help them obtain and keep jobs. Research has shown that access to a car is more important to getting and keeping a job than having a high-school diploma. As USC’s Genevieve Giuliano says, “private vehicle access is the key to improved mobility for the poor.”

One problem with this solution is that there probably are not 2 to 3 million used cars for sale for less than $4,000. Cars.com lists more than 40,000 cars for under $4,000; nearly 65,000 cars for under $5,000; and well over a quarter million for under $10,000. No doubt there are many cars for sale not listed on cars.com, but still not 3 million for under $4,000.

This would only be a problem if every transit agency in the country simultaneously makes this offer. Since this is unlikely, agencies that see the need to downsize their operations today can offer the auto-liberation alternative to their low-income customers without worries that the stock of used cars will immediately disappear.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

10 Responses to Saving Energy While Liberating the Poor

  1. JimKarlock says:

    Do we really believe Trimet’s numbers? (Portland)

    thanks
    JK

  2. Henry Porter says:

    An even better solution than the Antiplanner’s better solution is to distribute the subsidies among those who need it (poor people, not transit unions) and let them choose how to use it. Similar to food stamps, give them “mobility stamps” that they could cash in for trips. Transportation providers…including taxis, car sharing, bike sharing, carpool drivers and, yes, even transit operators (jitney services might pop up if FTA didn’t prohibit them)…would then have to compete to earn the stamps and individual recipients would be able to make decisions as to how best to spend their coupons.

    This would also end subsidies for the well-to-do.

    I’ve always thought it weird that, when poor people can’t afford to buy groceries, we give them coupons and send them to the grocery store of their choice. We don’t build them a completely new grocery store. But when poor people can’t afford cars, we build them a separate transportation system that’s more expensive to run than the one they can’t afford, then we subsidize it forever.

  3. Sandy Teal says:

    Just eight years ago, almost to the day…..

    The Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), colloquially known as “cash for clunkers”, was a $3 billion U.S. federal scrappage program intended to provide economic incentives to U.S. residents to purchase a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle when trading in a less fuel-efficient vehicle. The program was promoted as providing stimulus to the economy by boosting auto sales, while putting safer, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient vehicles on the roadways.

    The program officially started on July 1, 2009, processing of claims began July 24,[2] and the program ended on August 24, as the appropriated funds were exhausted.[3][4] The deadline for dealers to submit applications was August 25.[5] According to estimates of the Department of Transportation, the initial $1 billion appropriated for the system was exhausted by July 30, 2009, well before the anticipated end date of November 1, 2009, due to very high demand.[6][7][8] In response, Congress approved an additional $2 billion.[6][7][9][10]

    On August 26 the DoT reported that the program resulted in 690,114 dealer transactions submitted requesting a total of $2.877 billion in rebates.[1][11] At the end of the program Toyota accounted for 19.4% of sales, followed by General Motors with 17.6%, Ford with 14.4%, Honda with 13.0%, and Nissan with 8.7%.[1][12] It led to a gain in market share for Japanese and Korean manufacturers at the expense of American car makers, with only Ford not taking a significant hit.[13] Meanwhile, Japan’s own program excluded U.S. cars.[14] The Department of Transportation also reported that the average fuel efficiency of trade-ins was 15.8 mpg (miles per gallon), compared to 24.9 mpg for the new cars purchased to replace them, translating to a 58% fuel efficiency improvement.[1]

    A study published after the program by researchers at the University of Delaware concluded that for each vehicle trade, the program had a net cost of approximately $2,000, with total costs outweighing all benefits by $1.4 billion.[15][16] Another study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that the program improved the average fuel economy of all vehicles purchased by 0.6 mpg in July 2009 and by 0.7 mpg in August 2009.[17]

  4. OFP2003 says:

    Sandy Teal,
    Please provide the link to that study/survey/document. Good information I’d like to share.
    -OFP2003

  5. JOHN1000 says:

    Sandy:

    One important (and very relevant to this article) omission.

    Cash for Clunkers drove the cost of used cars up tremendously, devastating the poorer part of the population.

  6. prk166 says:

    I’m not a fan of cash for clunkers but it didn’t affect market prices. New cars sales had tanked but people still in need of a vehicle today were till buying. 2008 sales for used cars were 36 1/2 million. They dropped only by a million in 2009.

    New car sales dropped off a lot faster and much larger proportionally. Add in that some like Edmunds estimated that all but 125,000 of those new car sales would’ve occurred sans Cash-for-Clunkers, it’s hard to see how much of an affect it had on prices.

    New car sales
    2007 – 16,154,064
    2008 – 13,245,718
    2009 – 10,431,510

    Good snap shot of a source of the used car market with a bit of new cars sales
    https://www.niada.com/PDFs/Publications/2010IndustryReport.pdf

  7. metrosucks says:

    Planners don’t give a shit about poor people. They just want to extend their control over ever more areas where they can practice their totalitarian smart growth philosophies.

  8. TCS says:

    Subsidize transit or buy them used cars?

    Cars and transit are not the only two ways to get around. Folks all over the world use share taxis (the American term for this that nobody remembers is ‘jitney’), a transportation method that’s by-and-large been legislated out of existence in the USA to prevent competition with government transit and the lucrative (at least for government and/or politicians) taxi business.

    Then there are pedal bicycles, mopeds and small motorbikes, in long term wide use around the world. Newish personal transportation ideas being tried include electric assist bicycles and bike share schemes. Yes, yes, I’m sure this is absolutely unworkable in the United States, yet somehow folks worldwide have learned how to use these machines for personal transportation even in places that have snow or seasonal monsoons.

    Crazy, I know – yet the world’s most produced motor vehicle is the Honda Super Cub, with over 100,000,000 built – plus every major Asian motorcycle manufacturer builds competing models. $4000 for a used car? As an economic comparison point a brand new Cub (arguably the Cadillac of small motorbikes) coming out of Honda’s factory in China goes for something around $1500.

  9. CapitalistRoader says:

    “Yes, yes, I’m sure this is absolutely unworkable in the United States, yet somehow folks worldwide have learned how to use these machines for personal transportation even in places that have snow or seasonal monsoons.”

    Yes, yes I’ve definitely on many occasions seen a family of six on a Honda Super Cub (or its equivalent) in Phnom Penh and Luang Prabang and Saigon and Bangalore. Somehow I don’t think that such transport would appeal to first-world people.

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