Commuting

Supporters of congestion pricing rallied Monday at Broadway Junction in Brooklyn.

Every day, the streets of American cities are more clogged and polluted at rush hour because the federal government pays people to drive to work.

The handful of cities that led the rebound of U.S. bike commuting a decade ago seem to have slowed down — but continuing growth elsewhere suggests that progress can still happen if cities want it to.

With a "parking cash out" policy, employers who provide employees with parking benefits also give the equivalent value in cash to workers who don't car commute. Now a version of that idea has been introduced in the DC Council by members Charles Allen, Mary Cheh, and Brianne Nadeau.

Transforming from a car city to a transit city is no easy task. Just ask Denver and Los Angeles, which have spent billions to build rail systems but struggled to reduce solo car commuting rates. But Seattle shows it can be done: The share of downtown commuters who drive alone dropped from 35 percent in 2010 to 30 percent last year.

What’s the cost of a long commute? If you’re struggling to make ends meet, spending hours each day just to get to work not only costs you time, it can also be a major barrier to economic mobility.

With their powerful results, the studies coming out of the Equality of Opportunity Project, led by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren, have become an important touchstone for journalists and transportation policy advisers. In their 2014 [PDF] and 2015 [PDF] studies, Chetty and Hendren show that place matters for low-income families. When low-income families have the opportunity to raise their children in better environments, their children do better as adults. And with their use of “big data,” Chetty and Hendren can show that these better environments are not just correlated with improved incomes, but actually cause them.

Where are Americans making the shift away from driving to work?

New York City is America's car-free capital, home to eight and half million people, most of whom get around without owning a car. When so many of us already live car-free, what more can come out of an event like last Friday's Car-Free Day?