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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Vehicle Miles Driven

The Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Commission has released the latest report on Traffic Volume Trends, data through December. Travel on all roads and streets changed by -2.9% (-7.0 billion vehicle miles) for December 2012 as compared with December 2011. The 12-month moving average of miles driven increased only 0.34% from December a year ago (PDF report). And the civilian population-adjusted data (age 16-and-over) has set yet another post-financial crisis low.

Here is a chart that illustrates this data series from its inception in 1970. I'm plotting the "Moving 12-Month Total on ALL Roads," as the DOT terms it. See Figure 1 in the PDF report, which charts the data from 1987. My start date is 1971 because I'm incorporating all the available data from the DOT spreadsheets.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reason #1, Less of us have jobs to go to anymore.

Reason #2, gas ii astronomically high in price.