Institute of Urban and Regional Development

America’s growing dependency on the private automobile is widely cited as a root cause of many of today’s urban problems – traffic congestion, air pollution, and faceless urban sprawl. In 1960, 43 million Americans commuted alone to work. By 1990 their numbers had risen to 101 million (U.S. department of Transportation, 1994). During the 1980s, the national share of drive alone commuters jumped from 64.4 percent to 73.2 (Pisarski, 1992). Nor do these trends appear to be slowing. The latest “State of the commute” report by the Commuter Transportation services (1994) – the annual tracking study of commuter behavior in the greater Los Angeles region – shows Southern California’s drive-alone rate increased from 77 percent in 1992 to 79 percent in 1993. Similar trends have been reported for the San Francisco Bay Area (RIDES, 1994).