Detroiter walks 21 miles in work commute

[nain rouge]

For awhile I had to take SMART from 10 & Gratiot to about 12 1/2 & Southfield. You'd think I was commuting to Ohio. It took almost 2 hours each way, over 4 times as long it took by car.

And guess what? I did it for a few months. And no, I didn't feel like a shining example of the American work ethic. It just felt like I was living somewhere that was designed poorly.

What kills me about all this is people think mass transit is a waste of money, but good transit actually saves people a lot of money: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/livability/f...andhousing.cfm

"While living in a city is often perceived as expensive, living close to transit and being able to walk or take a bike makes up for much of the premium in housing costs. Comparing North Center Chicago with North Aurora, a Chicago exurb, shows that living further from the central city can actually be more expensive. While the average monthly transportation cost in North Center is $632, that cost jumps to $905 in Aurora. Although housing does cost more in the downtown area, the combined cost of housing and transportation for the average household income in Aurora is $2,954 more than the cost for the average household in downtown Chicago."

Americans, on average, spend more on transportation than food: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm .

Regions with better mass transit tend to have lower transportation costs: http://www.cnt.org/repository/2012-F...t-Rankings.pdf . I know from experience that Honolulu is very aggressive about public transportation, and so it comes as little surprise that it destroys all other medium metros for transportation costs.