Driving to the Poor House

Protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, claim that the city relies on traffic tickets for too much of its revenue and that tickets for lower-income people often turn into bench warrants and jail time.

For example, one man received a $100 ticket and had only $80 when he went to pay it, so the ticket turned into a warrant for his arrest.

The ticketing is obviously unfair and a hardship to many people, so I support the protests.  But I wonder why none of the news stories about Ferguson mention the deeper issue that underlies it.  Why do we design our cities so people have to drive?

That man who doesn't have $100 to pay his traffic ticket undoubtedly spends thousands of dollars on his car each year. The cost is a hardship even to middle-class Americans and much more of a hardship to the poor.  Yet most Americans live in locations where they cannot go anywhere without driving.

I myself am lucky enough to live in an older city where it is possible to get around without a car.  I have bicycled as my main form of transportation for all of my adult life.  When I was commuting by bicycle, I estimated that I spend less than $50 per year on transportation, which went to occasional bike parts and repairs - quite a contrast with the $7,000 per year that the average American spends on transportation.

If I had owned a car all that time, I would have only about half as much in my savings as I do.

Let's deal with the short-term hardship caused by unfair ticketing in Ferguson, but let's also deal with the much greater economic burden of automobile dependency by rebuilding our cities so it is not mandatory to own an automobile.

It reminds me of the old saying of Will Rogers: America is the first country in history where people drive to the poorhouse.