While we’ve always been big advocates of public transportation, we’ve now found yet another reason to love it — it creates more jobs.

According to new data released by the Transportation Equity Network, investment in public transit can create hundreds of thousands more jobs than highway projects.

The More Transit Equals More Jobs study examined 20 federally authorized projects and found that “if [they] shifted 50 percent of their highway funds to transit, they would generate an additional 184,801 jobs over a five-year period without spending any more money.”

As the right continues to fight against high speed rail, they should seriously consider this data given how high unemployment is currently.

Then there’s all the other reasons to support public transportation. It reduces traffic congestions, clears up the air and saves you a fair amount of money from paying for gas, insurance and car payments.

The funny thing is, this isn’t even the first study to prove this (and yet the protests against public transit get louder). Previous studies, including the federal Recovery Act spending, have found that public transportation makes more sense for employment.

For every billion dollars spent on public transportation under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 19,299 job-months were created through the end of 2009, while every billion dollars spent on highway projects produced only 10,493 job-months, according to the study.

Because building public transit projects are more labor intensive, it keeps several more people employed for longer periods of time. Since less money is spent on land use, more money is spent on labor. And even beyond just the initial investment, public transportation requires a workforce to maintain the equipment and handle the trains and subways cars.

Creating communities that are less dependent on their cars, will have broad consequences in the long run. And it will also finally take away from our unhealthy dependence on oil.

This is why I hope to always live in a city where I don’t have to own a car. Seriously, you’re helping the environment, the job market, and you don’t have to worry about getting home after three beers on a Saturday night.