Wringing your hands about the cost of gasoline?

Get out of your car and get into a transit oriented development (TOD).

If your next home is in a TOD community, your housing choice could help defray the cost of gasoline by lowering demand and dependency on its use while easing the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels and sprawl.

With a gallon of gasoline nearing the $3 mark -- up nearly a buck from a year ago nationwide -- a group of organizations say housing affordability isn't only a measure of what portion of your income you shell out for the mortgage and related costs, but also the cost of transportation to and from work, school, worship, shopping, medical care and the host of other destinations you regularly visit.

Simply put, the nearer you live to those destinations or the more transportation options available to you from your community, the more opportunities you'll have to spend less on petrol fueled transportation.

Today you have a choice. In the near future, the scramble to live where a car is less necessary will reduce your options.

Championing the TOD cause, The Center for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is an initiative that includes input from a host of like-minded organizations including:

• Congress for the New Urbanism

• Reconnecting America

• Center for Neighborhood Technology

• New Urbanism

• Surface Transportation Policy Project

• Urban Land Institute.

Experts from some of those groups helped contribute to the documentary called, "End Of Suburbia," which reveals that the depletion of oil and the ensuing economic and social chaos are inevitable. That's especially true in suburban and rural areas where driving ever-larger, gas-powered vehicles has been considered a birthright, but ultimately will be recognized as an unsustainable lifestyle.

Last summer, based on 2003 and 2004 gasoline prices averaging $1.56 a gallon and $1.85 a gallon nationwide, respectively, the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) and the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) released a study that found some communities spending as much as 20 cents on every dollar for gasoline.

By some measures, that's an amount nearing what affordable housing should cost. Today, some families very likely pay much more, at least as much for transportation as for housing -- if not more.

The study has yet to be updated, but at the time it found that families in Houston, TX, were spending 20.9 percent of their income on gasoline, followed by the Cleveland, OH and Detroit, MI at 20.5 percent; Tampa, FL, 20.4 percent; and Kansas City, MO at 20.2 percent.

The national average was 19.1 percent, making 2003 the second highest year for transportation costs as a share of family budget in the last twenty years. Transportation expenditures in 2002 set a record for the period at 19.2 percent, according to STPP.

Since 2003, the cost of gas-at-the-pump is on pace to double any day now, pushing gasoline expenditures into the all-time-high arena for costs as a share of the family budget.

In what now looms as a haunting statement made a year ago when gas prices were 50 to 75 cents cheaper, then STPP president Anne E. Canby said, "Transportation costs are already too high and recent spikes in gas prices only make the burden on families heavier."

Today TODs are more viable than ever, primarily for the gasoline savings, but also for a host of other reasons.

Published: May 1, 2006

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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.