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.
Reason #1, Less of us have jobs to go to anymore.
ReplyDeleteReason #2, gas ii astronomically high in price.