The US is currently going through it’s biggest ever drop in driving, moving away from driving cars in favour of other forms of transportation, according to a new Brookings Institution report. There is no question that this is a huge shift away from the historical trend with all of that implies for civil engineers, policy planners, and anyone in the transportation business.

The report—The Road…Less Traveled: An Analysis of Vehicle Miles Traveled Trends in the US—shows that national vehicle miles traveled (VMT), began to plateau as far back as 2004 and dropped in 2007 for the first time since 1980. Per capita driving followed a similar pattern, with flat-lining growth after 2000 and falling rates since 2005. And this is before the steep gas price increases through 2007 to 2008.

Despite gasoline prices declining sharply from September until October, drivers did not get back in their cars. Now that Congress is embarking on very important discussions on economic stimulus and infrastructure spending, it’s vital that this sort of data is factored in key planning decisions. Although some policy decisions should be taken with changing the vector of public transportation in mind, it is clear that this change should be taken as an opportunity to take bold, positive action for change.
This from the report.

From October 2007 to September 2008, Americans drove 90 billion fewer miles than the same time period the year before. For the first time in US history, the amount of roadway available to drivers is outpacing the number of miles actually driven. Transit use is at its highest level since the 1950’s, and Amtrak just set a ridership record this year.

“The American driver has hit a wall. We are now driving the same distance per year as we did in 1998.”
said Robert Puentes one of the co-authors of the report.

While total driving in both rural and urban areas grew between January 1991 and September 2008, rural and urban VMT have been declining since 2004 and 2007, respectively. Amongst these collective driving declines, the nation shifted more of its VMT share to larger capacity, urban roadways.

Possible reasons for the change range from rising unemployment to saturation of vehicle ownership to a limit on the amount of miles the average person can actually manage. Regardless of the reasons one of the main results of this reduction in driving will be reduced gas tax revenues leading to a drop in the biggest source of funding for transportation projects. Possible recommendations to fill the budget hole range from raising the federal gas tax in the short-term and repealing the gas guzzler tax exemption for SUVs and light trucks to increase revenues to creating new federal mechanisms to spark innovation in places that want to link disparate transportation, housing, energy and environmental policies to create better outcomes. My favourite is for grants to promote sustainable development patterns and reduce carbon emissions, especially if we can start to say the PO word without dressing it up in climate change and clouding the debate in the process. Can we say energy transition people?

You can read the full report by Robert Puentes and Adie Tomer here (warning PDF file).