Recent Streetsblog USA posts about VMT

Not Just a Phase: Young Americans Won’t Start Motoring Like Their Parents

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 14, 2014 | 53 Comments

A raft of recent research indicates that young adults just aren’t as into driving as their parents were. Young people today are walking, biking, and riding transit more while driving less than previous generations did at the same age. But the vast majority of state DOTs have been loathe to respond by changing their highway-centric ways. A […]

Census Data Shows How Much Less Millennials and Gen-Xers Commute by Car

By Joseph Kane and Adie Tomer | Oct 8, 2014 | 2 Comments

Cross-posted from Brookings’ The Avenue blog. This article is the second in a short series examining new Census data on transportation trends. Nationally, most commuters are still revving up their cars to get to work every morning, but the picture is more complicated when you look across different age groups. Based on the latest Census data from […]

Car Commuting Still Rules, But New Census Data Reveals Important Shifts

By Adie Tomer and Joseph Kane | Sep 30, 2014 | 2 Comments

Cross-posted from Brookings’ The Avenue blog. Driving to work has been a staple in the American commute for decades, but it appears the country’s love affair with cars is stalling in many places. After years of sustained growth, driving levels are flat-lining, while more young people are opting for alternative transportation modes. Newly released Census data from […]

FHWA Gleefully Declares That Driving Is Up, Calls for More Highway Spending

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 2, 2014 | 29 Comments

Well, so much for the predictions that changing preferences and new technologies will lead to a car-free utopia. The Federal Highway Administration announced last week that after nine years of steady decline, vehicle-miles-traveled in the U.S. was 1.4 percent higher this June than last June. Apparently, red-blooded Americans everywhere are finally getting back to their […]

California Has Officially Ditched Car-Centric ‘Level of Service’

By Damien Newton and Melanie Curry | Aug 7, 2014 | No Comments

Ding, dong…LOS is dead. At least as far as the state of California is concerned. Level of Service (LOS) has been the standard by which the state measures the transportation impacts of major developments and changes to roads. Level of Service is basically a measurement of how many cars can be pushed through an intersection […]

Arizonans Driving Like It’s 1994

By Angie Schmitt | Jul 23, 2014 | 6 Comments

Here’s more evidence that there’s a shift underway in how Americans get around: The Arizona Public Interest Research Group has released a new report [PDF] showing that residents of this sprawling Sun Belt state are driving less and taking transit more. Between 2005 and 2012, the average number of miles driven by each Arizona resident […]

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