Where we live and work and how we get to and from work, home, shopping, and play costs us a pretty penny. Without attractive options in public transit, most families find they need two cars to satisfy basic transportation needs, which costs them a quarter of average household earnings – on average, about $8,000 a year per car on gas, repairs, insurance and car payments. This is far more than most countries spend on transit.

Our homes are also costing us more than they should. If we built new homes closer to existing infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage, roads, mass transit) and made them energy efficient, they’d be cheaper to build and less costly to maintain. This would also be good for owners of older housing, who currently subsidize the cost of sprawl.

We have a great opportunity right now to make better choices in transportation and housing. Half of the building stock of this country in 2030 will be built between now and then, and where it’s built will determine our transportation needs. We should build it in a way that reduces commute times, makes housing cheaper, and reduces our car-dependence.

Here’s how Jonathan proposes to do this:

Fair House Pricing: Sprawl adds about $60,000 to the cost of a new home because of the new infrastructure that needs to be built to reach far-flung communities. But, the cost of sprawl is dumped on those already connected to that infrastructure, in older communities where there is lots of room to connect others. This isn’t fair. We should encourage full-cost accounting in housing prices, so that people who build for sprawl carry those costs. That will reduce sprawl, and reduce the tax burden on existing homeowners.

Efficient Homes: We could cut our utility bills in half if our homes were more energy efficient. The Feds should back state and municipal bonds that provide money for retrofitting homes, for free, with the savings from that paying back the bonds. We should also require that energy-efficient homes be given preference for federally-backed home mortgages, and require that, at point of sale, all homes need to meet some basic efficiency standard. We should also reward smart choices in home ownership by increasing mortgage eligibility for those who live near public transit. They won’t need their extra cars—and that means they can better carry mortgage costs.

Let’s Travel Together, Faster, Cheaper: We have one of the worst systems of mass transit in the world, and that imposes a hidden tax on working families by forcing them to buy and maintain more cars than they’d otherwise need. We should aim at range of attractive non-car options for getting around: high speed rail between major population centers, dense bus and rail systems within them, quick connections among different means of transport during a trip. This will cost money, but it’s a public investment worth making. It will more than pay for itself in new jobs, reduced living costs, improved public health, and less time lost in traffic jams. And who among us wouldn’t like to spend less time stuck in our cars?

Airport Passenger Fees: Each time you take a flight you pay a special fee for airport use which, under federal law, can only be spent for airport improvement. This is like state restrictions on spending gasoline taxes only to build roads. Such restrictive taxes or user fees for particular transportation modes tend to lock them in place, and should be abolished. Communities should be free to choose whatever mix of transportation options best meets the goal of lowering transportation costs and reducing travel time.

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