True cost of getting from here to there

  • By Aubrey Davis
  • Friday, May 14, 2004 9:00pm
  • Opinion

Twenty dollars and change.

That’s what the average driver in our region spends every day on transportation. This is before considering the costs of freight, or indirect costs such as hours lost in congestion and the health effects of air pollution.

Where does that money go? Many people believe it goes to taxes and transit. Is that true? Take a look at the numbers and decide for yourself.

First, almost all of it, about $19 a day, is paid by you to own and operate your vehicle. Does $19 a day sound possible? Consider your car payments and insurance alone and work it out. Then consider gas, tune-ups, repairs, tires – it adds up faster than you think.

AAA has done this – they figure it costs roughly $15.50 a day just to own one vehicle. This is just an average – a luxury SUV is going to cost more, an economy sedan less.

Driving your car adds to that cost. Gas, oil, tires, maintenance is going to cost you another $3.50 or so a day, and that’s before fuel taxes (which we add back in below).

This all adds up to $19 a day for each car.

Also, AAA figures costs looking at the entire United States. They don’t include parking because in most of the nation it’s free. But not if you work in any of our downtowns, in which case you’re probably paying an additional $80 and $200 a month to park.

We’ve now spent $19 of our $20.65 in personal expenses and we haven’t even paid for the roads we drive on.

Where does the other $1.65 come from, and what do we get for it?

First, of course, you pay at the pump: taxes add 18.4 cents to the feds and 28 cents to the state, cities and counties for every gallon of gas. On average, this adds about 65 cents a day to your driving costs.

Cities and counties have to build and maintain their own streets and roads, and pay for their policing. Together, they get only about a quarter of their transportation dollars from their share of the state gas tax; three-quarters comes from local sources. These taxes are paid by everyone, not just drivers, and cost each of us about 50 cents a day.

Finally, you may also pay a sales tax to support local transit. These taxes vary depending on where you live and shop, but on average add about another 50 cents per person to your daily costs. (The share is higher in Seattle, where vehicle owners also pay the Monorail tax, not included outside the city.)

Transit fares are an added cost for those who ride. If you ride the bus or train you’re probably paying somewhere between $2 and $8 a day, but if it means you don’t need an extra car, you just saved $19.

The $1.65 we pay in taxes is about 8 percent of our total costs for transportation.

That’s how much it costs to build and maintain all the freeways, highways, ferries, roads and city streets we drive on, and to operate the buses and trains.

Without this modest investment, of course, the $19 a day we spend on our own cars would have no value at all.

That $19, by the way, adds up to a whopping $15.6 billion a year in the four central Puget Sound counties. Comparing this to the projected costs of some the major projects on the region’s wish list – for those cars to drive on – makes the cost of those projects suddenly look a little more reasonable.

Transit equals about 3 percent of our personal transportation dollar. Yet most of our transit trips occur during the most crowded times on our freeways. Consider, for example, that during rush hour, transit on I-5 in the Seattle area carries about 15-25 percent of all commuters. Without transit, our most congested corridors would break down completely.

Probably few drivers realize how much we spend on transportation or how those costs break out between our personal vehicles and the roads we drive on. With our first 92 cents on the dollar, we buy ourselves comfortable, high-performing personal vehicles. With a begrudged 8 cents, we buy poorly maintained streets, freeway congestion, earthquake threatened bridges and struggling transit systems.

Understanding our full transportation costs is a necessary first step in getting out of this mess.

Aubrey Davis is chairman of the Washington State Transportation Commission.

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