Do we know how much we are spending on driving? Do we care?

According to surveys, spending on transportation is the second largest item in the family budget, some $8,000 a year. Do we have any idea we are spending that much?

That was the question posed to a presenter at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting here in Washington this week, a huge gathering approaching 10,000 transportation practitioners and researchers from around the world -- kind of the Consumer Electronics Show for transportation junkies. The paper under discussion looked at combined housing and transportation spending, and was done by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and presented by Carrie Makarewicz, previously from CNT, and now a doctoral graduate student at the University of California Berkeley. The research demonstrates how financially strapped families can become when the costs of driving was added to the presumably more affordable cost of housing in distant suburbs -- Minneapolis was shown in this poster session. It raised the question of whether these consumers actually put the costs together. Makerewicz' professor, Elizabeth Deakin observed that her studies suggested most people have no idea. Car payments and the price of filling the tank come at different times, so it is impossible for most people to estimate.

This seems a critical factor in affecting travel. If we knew how much driving really cost, would we reduce driving? Could we? We agreed this is a good topic for further research.