Recent Streetsblog USA posts about VMT

Without Transit, American Cities Would Take Up 37 Percent More Space

By Angie Schmitt | Sep 28, 2015 | 1 Comment

Even if you never set foot on a bus or a train, chances are transit is saving you time and money. The most obvious reason is that transit keeps cars off the road, but the full explanation is both less intuitive and more profound: Transit shrinks distances between destinations, putting everything within closer reach. A new study published by the Transportation Research Board quantifies […]

FHWA Gleefully Reports That Driving Is Rising Again

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 21, 2015 | 12 Comments

After flatlining for nearly a decade, the mileage driven by Americans is rising once again. That means more traffic overwhelming city streets, slowing down buses, and spewing pollutants into the air. But to the Federal Highway Administration, it’s a development to report with barely contained glee. This June, Americans drove 8.7 billion more miles than last June, […]

Putting the Recent Uptick in Driving in Perspective

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 12, 2015 | 7 Comments

With gas prices plummeting and employment figures rising, America’s per capita driving rate increased in 2014 for the first time in nearly a decade. But experts warn driving is far from back to its previous historical pattern. According to new data from the Federal Highway Administration, total driving mileage climbed 1.7 percent in 2014, higher than […]

Americans Are Driving Less, But Road Expansion Is Accelerating

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 20, 2015 | 14 Comments

Americans drive fewer miles today than in 2005, but since that time the nation has built 317,000 lane-miles of new roads — or about 40,000 miles per year. Maybe that helps explain why America’s infrastructure is falling apart. The new data on road construction comes from the Federal Highway Administration and reached our attention via Tony Dutzik at the Frontier […]

The Feds Quietly Acknowledge the Driving Boom Is Over

By Phineas Baxandall | Jan 7, 2015 | 13 Comments

The Federal Highway Administration has very quietly acknowledged that the driving boom is over. After many years of aggressively and inaccurately claiming that Americans would likely begin a new era of rapid driving growth, the agency’s more recent forecast finally recognizes that the protracted post-World War II era has given way to a different paradigm. […]

The Great Traffic Projection Swindle

By Angie Schmitt and Payton Chung | Nov 20, 2014 | 22 Comments

This is the final piece in a three-part series about privately-financed roads. In the first two parts of this series, we looked at the Indiana Toll Road as an example of the growth in privately financed highways, and how financial firms can turn these assets into profits, even if the road itself is a big money loser. […]

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