Recent Streetsblog USA posts about VMT

Millennials Will Drive More As They Age, But Still Less Than Their Parents

By Tanya Snyder | May 14, 2013 | 20 Comments

At some point over the past few years, a lot of my friends started moving to Silver Spring and Takoma Park and Falls Church. These inner-ring, transit-connected suburbs of DC are still far less compact and walkable than the neighborhoods my friends moved from. So they bought cars. Why did they do this? They’re entering […]

U.S. PIRG: The Driving Boom Is Over But the Road-Building Binge Continues

By Tanya Snyder | May 14, 2013 | 14 Comments

The driving boom is over. After decades of steady growth, U.S. driving rates have stagnated and even fallen. Per capita driving is as low as it was in 1996. And yet, federal and state government estimates continue to predict inexorable growth, relentlessly building expensive new highways for drivers who might not materialize. A groundbreaking new […]

How Green Is Grocery Delivery in Cities?

By Tanya Snyder | May 10, 2013 | 29 Comments

In a recent study out of Seattle, researchers Erica Wygonik and Anne Goodchild found that having groceries delivered by truck can cut mileage by up to 85 or 95 percent compared to driving a car. “It’s like a bus for groceries,” Goodchild told NPR. “Overwhelmingly, it’s more efficient to be sharing a vehicle, even if it’s a little larger.” […]

Where Is the Bottom? Americans Continue to Drive Less and Less

By Angie Schmitt | Apr 23, 2013 | 27 Comments

The downward slide continues. Driving activity in America, adjusted for population, has hit a new low since before the economic downturn began. Doug Short, an independent analyst who evaluated data recently released by FHWA, finds that when controlling for population growth, it’s been more than seven years, or 92 months, since American driving activity last […]

Streetfacts: Americans Are Driving Less

By Clarence Eckerson Jr. | Apr 3, 2013 | No Comments

We continue our Streetfacts series by looking at the data on driving in the U.S. Per-capita driving has declined every year since 2005. That’s not a blip, it’s now an 8-year trend. The reason? Neither the state of the economy nor changes in gas prices offer a satisfactory explanation. Social preferences and demographic shifts seem to […]

How Much Driving Is Avoided When Someone Rides a Bike?

By Tanya Snyder | Mar 29, 2013 | 34 Comments

If Jane Doe rides her bike a mile to the post office and then back home, is it fair to assume she just avoided two miles of driving? And can we then assume that she prevented 2.2 pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted? That’s more or less the way most agencies calculate averted vehicle-miles traveled. One […]

Show More Stories