The Washington Post Wonkblog section has a short article that I found of interest on the question of whether the US highway departments are getting too much money for building new roads and highways in expectation of future traffic volume that may never happen. There are obviously multiple reasons for the near plateau in total VMT since circa 2005, but I suspect that most policy planners and politicians are oblivious that total VMT has been flat since then. The numbers have bearing on the issue of whether passenger rail and transit systems should get a bigger piece of the transportation funding pie, although I expect these stats will have little effect on the roads vs passenger rail funding in the near term in most states and in Congress.
The U.S. government keeps predicting we’ll drive more than we actually do Excerpt:
The U.S. government keeps predicting we’ll drive more than we actually do Excerpt:
Here is the chart of the forecasts for total Vehicle Miles Traveled (in trillions!) going back to 1999 with the black line as the actual number measured. The gap between the actual VMT in 2012 and the 1999-2004 forecasts for 2012 is really big.Sundquist and Tony Dutzik of the Frontier Group sifted through a half-dozen old U.S. Department of Transportation reports to Congress and found a trend: Since 1999, the agency has consistently predicted that U.S. vehicle-miles traveled would rise dramatically (based on state and local forecasts). In reality, the opposite happened. The growth in vehicle travel slowed and then appeared to "peak" around 2007.
There's still lots of debate about why Americans are driving less since 2007. Some of it may be due to temporary factors like the recession (unemployed people tend to drive less). Some may be due to long-term trends like the aging of America (retirees drive less). Or higher gasoline prices (a deterrent against road trips). Young people are also driving less, and there are a slew of theories as to why: It's getting more expensive to buy a car, the barriers to getting a license are increasing, Facebook makes it easier to hang out with friends without driving...
Few people were predicting that shift (though here's one exception) — so it's not surprising that official forecasts missed it. But what's notable is that the forecasts still haven't caught up. Even as the number of vehicle-miles traveled drooped after 2007, the agency kept predicting significant increases. (We'll see how these forecasts get updated in the agency's 2012 report, which is due out soon).