auto dependent city = expensive, fewer small businesses, elderly suffer

If you live in a neighborhood with good public transportation, you save a lot.  Save up to $8,000 a year for a car and it's upkeep, or cut your transport cost from 25% to 9% of your total expenses.  If you have a choice, pick a city or area that is not auto-dependent.  Speak up for more public transport.

I live in one of those central plains cities that demands a car.  The city suffers a tyranny of developers always building further out stretching the infrastructure, a city of 330,000 depending on where you cross at we are 15 to 30 miles crosssection.  Big waste of farm land.   The only public transport is city bus, there are few routes, they pass only every 30 minutes, operation is from 6:30 to 6:30, Sat 7 - 6:30, Sunday - Holiday nothing.  There are large areas of the city that are 2 miles from a bus stop.  The service is so limited it is of almost no use, fewer ride each year, it doesn't go to any factories, by chance it only goes to a few schools, and shopping areas, so the city discontinues another section of service every year.  Bike paths, if you call that public transport, we have only a few miles and any discussion to add more are met with rage and predicton of crime and littering.  (how many gangs do drive by's on a Wall-Mart bike, who rides the city throwing McDonalds sacks and disposable diapers, it's the most insane shit you ever heard)

The cost of living in an auto-dependent city is huge, and a disaster for the elderly, handicap, poor.   Limiting sprawl would help, help move part of that $8,000 to local cafe's, grocers, churches, theaters, and a new wave of mom and pop stores providing work for some of the central residents.  Elderly can live independently many years longer in a neighborhood with public transport and more small stores, and increase foot and bike traffic lowers crime.