If you want to put the brakes on transportation costs, steer clear of making Dallas-Fort Worth, Anchorage, Houston, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego and Minneapolis-St. Paul your home town.

Or at least avoid the suburbs there.

In each of those major metropolitan areas, it will cost more than $9,000 a year in personal transportation costs for your car, truck, SUV or other personal vehicle, compared to the $7, 633 national average. The figures are higher in suburban areas where public transportation is less available.

It's money you could be spending on buying a home.

Among the 28 major metropolitan areas surveyed, Dallas-Fort Worth will cost you the most in annual transportation costs -- $10,516 a year -- while Tampa, FL's $9,292 per year represents the town with the greatest transportation cost as a percentage of total living expenditures, according to "Transportation Costs and the American Dream: Why a Lack of Transportation Choices Strains the Family Budget and Hinders Homeownership," by the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP), a nationwide network of more than 800 organizations devoted to improving the nation's transportation system.

The problem is there's not enough public transportation to go around, especially in the suburbs and it's eating into money you could be spending on housing.

Not food, education, health care nor clothing takes a bigger bite out of your bring-home pay pie than transportation costs, which amount to 19.3 percent nationwide. Food and health care combined don't amount to the cash bite transportation swallows. Only housing takes a bigger piece of the pie -- 32.9 percent, according to the report.

For middle- and upper-income families, the cost of transportation is taken for granted. But for the poorest American families the high costs of owning and maintaining a car may put home ownership out of reach.

Transportation costs are highest in sprawling areas such as Tampa, Phoenix ($8,910) and Dallas, because of not-so-smart growth patterns, the lack of transportation choices and the absence of convenient neighborhoods within walking distance of shops and schools. 

And for middle- and low-income families the costs of owning and maintaining several vehicles may lock them out of home ownership -- one of the most reliable forms of wealth creation at relatively low risk.

"As families know, housing and transportation costs are intrinsically linked. Rising home costs push families to the edge of urban areas in search of affordable housing, but these families then face higher transportation costs.  Rising transportation costs -- particularly the need to own one or more cars -- mean that families have less to spend on housing and are less likely to be able to rent or buy decent, affordable housing," says Kim Schaffer, of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Transportation costs have doubled in the last 40 years leaving families stuck in neutral on the way to the American Dream of home ownership and its equity wealth growth with little financial leverage as well as tax benefits.

Since the recession, home owning households who've found themselves suddenly unemployed have been able to "eat their house" and live off the equity until happier days are here again.

It's not just the cost to buy and operate autos, but they depreciate quickly -- worth thousands of dollars less as soon as they are driven off the lot -- and they provide no financial gain.

As families buy more cars and trucks (especially through attractive, cheap credit financing), they have less money saved in their bank accounts and therefore less money to invest in home ownership, STPP says.

Published: August 13, 2003

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A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.