There’s a connection, or so say the sources in this piece in the Washington Post:

Federal spending is about 4 to 1 in favor of highways over transit. Today, more than 99 percent of the trips taken by U.S. residents are in cars or some other non-transit vehicle, largely as a result of decades of such unbalanced spending.

The policies — building so many highways and building so many houses near those highways — have had a direct bearing on how and where people live and work. More Americans, 52 percent, live in the suburbs than anywhere else. The suburban growth rate exceeded 90 percent in the past decade.

But there’s been a radical shift in recent months. Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer highway miles in May than a year earlier. In the Washington area and elsewhere, mass transit ridership is setting records. Last year, transit trips nationwide topped 10.3 billion, a 50-year high.

Home prices in the far suburbs, such as Prince William and Loudoun counties, have collapsed; those in the District and inner suburbs have stayed the same or increased. A recent survey of real estate agents by Coldwell Banker found an increased interest in urban living because of the high cost of commuting.

Brookings says transportation costs are now second only to housing as a percentage of the household budget, with food a distant third.

The people are leading the revolution, but land-use experts wonder whether a government policy so etched into the American fabric will follow.

“When people bought homes, they punched the numbers and said can we afford the mortgage payment and taxes,” Katz said. “This new paradigm is going to have families being more deliberate about the cost of transportation spending and energy costs. That’s a new phenomenon in the United States. That will be the change that will change development patterns.”

Katz and others said high fuel prices will increase demand for transit-oriented development, where homes, townhouses and office buildings cluster around transit hubs that link jobs with population centers.

(Pictured: Jennifer Olmstead (left) Daughter, Sarah Baybeck and husband, Brady Baybeck, (right) walk to the MetroLink station in the Delmar Loop in 2005 from their home in the 6000 block of Washington Boulevard. The couple chose this location because of its proximity to the light rail system. The couple walks together in the mornings and travel opposite directions. Olmstead went southbound towards the city and Baybeck went northbound with daughter Sarah.–Photo By Dawn Majors/Post-Dispatch)