Cars Improve Our Standard of Living

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Portland is a PR machine for light rail & streetcar

Here are Some Facts About Portland Oregon

“It must always be remembered how cost-effectiveness works in the public sector: the cost IS the benefit.” - author unknown

Cars Improve our Standard of Living

This is how many places you can get in 30 minutes
Red = transit Green = Car

Slide courtesy Wendal Cox

One can travel to far more destinations in a given amount of time by Car, improving your standard of living.

·	More Job Choices: Instead of choosing jobs along transit lines, one can choose from the whole area. More job choices usually means you can get a job that pays more.

·	More Shopping Choices: The ability to travel further allows a broader choices of where to shop and lets you choose lower cost stores, lowering your cost of living.

·	More Living Choices: The ability to travel further gives you a broader choices of where to live. This lets you choose a location that has better schools, lower housing costs or other better choices.

·	More Leisure Time Choices: Faster travel means you can travel further to that great restaurant.

·	More Convenient: Your car is usually just a few feet from your front door, so you don’t have to walk ¼ mile to the transit stop.

·	Less exposure to crime: You can choose your traveling companions - no drug dealers, no crazy people and no criminals.

·	Enabling the civil rights and women’s liberation movements

·	Making outdoor sports and numerous other recreational and social opportunities available to the average person;

·	Providing rapid access to fire and other emergency services and swift escape from natural disasters.

Because of these benefits, it is reasonable to call the mass-produced automobile the greatest invention in the 230 years since the American republic was founded. Those who seek to reduce the amount of driving people do by imposing disincentives to the auto or allowing traffic congestion to increase risk killing, or at least limiting, the automotive goose that laid the golden egg of American prosperity.

(Parts from: The Greatest Invention: How Automobiles Made America Great, Randal O’Toole)

Cars give you more choices and more freedom

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“In many parts of Minnesota, the path out of poverty is best traveled by car.” http://www.startribune.com/on-wheels-from-welfare-to-self-sufficiency/296275261/

“Yet to qualify for assistance, many families may be forced to give up the most effective tool they have in the fight against poverty and unemployment: their car.” http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/19/opinion/oe-obrien19

“Research has shown that a parent with a car is more likely to be employed and to work more hours than a parent without a car. A reliable automobile can provide parents with access to a greater array of employment opportunities.” http://www.cbpp.org/archives/11-8-01wel.htm

“welfare reform legislation makes clients going to work the principal objective. To aid them in this endeavor, several states have begun programs that get cars to clients,...”

This has a list of programs getting cars to the needy to improve their getting work

https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS98/rpt%5Colr%5Chtm/98-R-1017.htm

There are a lot of programs around the country to help low income people get cars to get jobs or better jobs: “Chart of Car Ownership Programs to Serve Low-Income Earners”

http://www.ctaa.org/webmodules/webarticles/articlefiles/car_sharing_appendix_A.pdf