UC Irvine Institute of Transportation Studies

What are the costs of our dependence on the automobile as a means of traveling to work? What are the relative costs of alternative travel modes? What conditions associated with transportation may have negative effects on well-being? The costs and benefits of environmental conditions and social programs typically are gauged by their immediate and economically tangible outcomes (cf. Catalano, 1979). When considering alternative modes of travel, individual commuters generally focus on the relative monetary expense, time constraints, and opportunities for privacy associated with the various modes. Government agencies tend to emphasize factors such as community levels of air pollution and fuel consumption (cf. Hartgen, 1977; Horowitz & Sheth, 1976). This emphasis on the economic and environmental consequences of personal . and community travel patterns neglects a potentially important set of transportation-related outcomes, namely, the cumulative emotional, behavioral, and health consequences of travel conditions. These outcomes, while less immediate and tangible than monetary and time constraints and less conspicuous than environmental decay, nevertheless should be considered in any attempt to assess the impact of transportation environments on people.