Abogo Measures True Costs of Transportation

I found this interesting online tool the other day, thanks to CEOs for Cities/Carol Coletta’s Twitter account (@ccoletta). Interesting not only on a personal, eye-opening level, but also on a policy-influencing level.

The tool is called Abogo and it calculates the average total transportation costs in your area. More often than not, if we own a vehicle, we don’t pay much attention to the true cost sof our transportation. Sure, we may keep track of what we spend on gas, but we often forget about the various maintenance costs that can quickly add up. And if our home is far away from not only our work, but also stores, doctors, recreational activities — well, the costs tend to rise due to the constant reliance on our cars.

How does Abogo do this? From their website:

We estimate total transportation costs for an average household from your region living in your neighborhood, including commuting, errands, and all the other trips around town. We count money spent on car ownership and use, as well as public transit use.  For CO2 emissions, we count car use only.

It’s still in beta and going through constant revisions, but, in the near-future, they “plan to introduce more personalization in the calculation that will give a better estimate for you.”

I plugged in my address and was told that average transportation costs in my neighborhood are $941 a month — the highest in the region. Understand that these are average household costs — these are not individual costs. Still, that number is steep. What are your average costs?

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