New Poll: Americans Feel Trapped in Their Cars

by: TheGreenMiles

Mon Sep 24, 2012 at 11:00:00 AM EDT

• 55 percent prefer to drive less, but 74 percent say they have no choice 
• 63 percent (more than three in five Americans) would rather address traffic by improving public transportation (42 percent) or developing communities where people do not have to drive as much (21 percent) - as opposed to building new roads, an approach preferred by only one in five Americans (20 percent) 
• Americans over-estimate what their state spends on public transportation, estimating that it is an average of 16 percent of their state's transportation budget - and still they would like that amount nearly doubled, calling for their state to spend an average of 28 percent on public transportation (note: The average percentage of transportation money - state plus federal - spent on transit over the past three years was 6.55 percent per state) 

This poll suggests many Americans would like to live somewhere that's affordable AND has transit options, and they don't realize just how much of their tax money is going instead to subsidize The Next Phenomenally Expensive Paving Project That Will Surely Solve All Our Transportation Problems.