U.S. drivers break mileage record

[cpzilliacus]

TheHill.com: Feds: US drivers break mileage record

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) said Thursday that U.S. residents have driven a record number of miles in the first half of 2015.

The agency said drivers have traveled 1.54 trillion miles between January and June, topping a previous record of 1.5 trillion miles that was set in 2007.

The figure is more than double the number of miles driven by U.S. residents in 1981, according to the agency.

"The new data, published in FHWA's latest 'Traffic Volume Trends' report, a monthly estimate of U.S. road travel, show that 275.13 billion miles were driven last June, the most ever in June of any year and the highest VMT for the first half of any year – reaffirming calls for increased investment in transportation infrastructure as demand on the nation's highway system grows," the agency said in a statement.

The finding comes as lawmakers are debating the future of federal transportation funding.

Congress attempted to pass a multiyear transportation bill before lawmakers left Washington for their traditional August recess, but the House and Senate failed to come to an agreement on a package.

[Brandon]

So much for the trend of declining driving, and that people don't drive as much as they used to.

[Road Hog]

More people = more drivers = more miles.

What is the miles per capita? That's a better indicator of driving behavior.

[cpzilliacus]

So much for the trend of declining driving, and that people don't drive as much as they used to, and people driving less because they are taking transit.

FTFY.

[getemngo]

More people = more drivers = more miles.

What is the miles per capita? That's a better indicator of driving behavior.

The first relevant Google link I found was this 2014 article. Virtually every source I've seen in the last decade says that the number of miles driven per capita peaked in either 2004 or 2005. But yes, a rising population more than cancels that out.

[The Nature Boy]

So much for the trend of declining driving, and that people don't drive as much as they used to, and people driving less because they are taking transit.

FTFY.

I agree with this. Public transit is great and people should take that in lieu of driving.

For some of us though, we have to drive. I live in rural Maine, I work in rural Maine and I do a lot of field work in rural Maine. By nature of my job, I HAVE to drive a lot. If I want to go to Boston, I could take the Downeaster but that requires an hour drive to Portland. Brunswick is closer but that service isn't regular.

I grew up in a rural area though and when I go to cities, I ALWAYS take public transit. Driving in cities is extra stress. Our population is urbanizing and more people are moving to cities. I imagine that the decline in miles driven per person is tied to that more than anything else.

[Duke87]

So much for the trend of declining driving, and that people don't drive as much as they used to.

What I find interesting is this:

The highway administration said Thursday "according to FHWA's Traffic Volume Trends report, the nation's driving has increased for 16 months in a row."

This means the upward trend began well before gas prices started dropping, so we can't pin it on that. Or at least can't pin it solely on that.

[Duke87]

More people = more drivers = more miles.

What is the miles per capita? That's a better indicator of driving behavior.

Vehicle miles traveled per capita peaked in 2004, at 10,126 miles per person. (source for VMT and population - math for VMT/pop done in my own spreadsheet)

Gross VMT peaked in 2007, at 3,031 billion miles. However by preliminary estimates, 2014 saw more VMT than any other year except 2007, at 3,016 billion miles (source)

On a per capita basis, however, VMT has not changed much in the past several years. Based on the above data plus 2014 population numbers from the Census Bureau via Google...

2001: 9,815 miles per person
2002: 9,930
2003: 9,962
2004: 10,126
2005: 10,114
2006: 10,101
2007: 10,062
2008: 9,790
2009: 9,639
2010: 9,592
2011: 9,468
2012: 9,459
2013: 9,452
2014: 9,459

I've collected a bunch of data on this subject over the years. Here's a graph:


And if anyone wants the spreadsheet where I keep all these numbers, here's a download link for the Excel file and a less graphically pretty but also less perishable Google docs link.

[Bruce]

And yet the gas tax remains the same.

Time for VMT (vehicle miles traveled) fees to get implemented.

[Brandon]

And yet the gas tax remains the same.

Time for VMT (vehicle miles traveled) fees to get implemented.

No.  If we're going to to something, we raise the fuel tax a bit (including taxing the electricity used for all-electric vehicles) and toll the freeways.

[cjk374]

And yet the gas tax remains the same.

Time for VMT (vehicle miles traveled) fees to get implemented.

Oh hell no you don't!  Just raise gas taxes and let the people pay their fair share that way. We don't need another different type of tax implemented.

[Bruce]

VMT fees would be a better replacement for gas taxes, according to some transportation experts. With the eventual transition into more and more fuel efficient (and electric) vehicles, gas tax revenue isn't going to keep up at a fast enough pace to maintain all of our worn out roads. Tolling the freeways wouldn't do all that much other than push traffic onto side streets, which will bring out the pitchforks.

[cjk374]

Electric cars are not taking over the car market tomorrow. There are very few places to recharge them. So, for many years to come, the majority of cars will be gas powered. Gas taxes can fuel road projects for many presidential terms ahead.

[Bruce]

Electric cars are not taking over the car market tomorrow. There are very few places to recharge them. So, for many years to come, the majority of cars will be gas powered. Gas taxes can fuel road projects for many presidential terms ahead.

Considering the glacial pace of national legislation, it's better to start planning ahead.

[corco]

Electric cars are not taking over the car market tomorrow. There are very few places to recharge them. So, for many years to come, the majority of cars will be gas powered. Gas taxes can fuel road projects for many presidential terms ahead.

You know how technology works- there's a slow trickle of adopters and then one day it really takes off and everybody has one. If right now we're in, say, 1987 cell phone in terms of electric car charging infrastructure, then we have about 20 years before we'll have a full set of electric capacity infrastructure.

[Rothman]

I'm all for getting rid of all tolls and gas taxes and replacing them with a VMT-based tax.

I have no idea why tolling has so many advocates -- that's what taxes are for.

[vdeane]

VMT taxes have quite a few issues though.  How does one handle out of state travel?  I don't want a GPS on my car tracking my every move.  And when does one pay?  A lump sum would be quite the financial burden.  And how to avoid double charging?  You can bet that the gas tax won't go away if a VMT tax goes in.

[Duke87]

The privacy concerns over a VMT tax's implementation have been much discussed, but allow me to offer a couple other concerns:

- it's a lot more administratively inefficient to collect than a gas tax since there are a lot more vehicles than gas stations out there. More points of collection = more people you need to collect from = more potential violators = more resources needing to be spent on enforcement. The best type of tax is one with as few points of collection as possible. The worst type of tax is one that individuals have to directly pay.

- it is psychologically much more difficult to ignore. I know that I have to put gas in my car but it's a thing I do every so often and I just consider it a cost of living. Some tax is included in the price of the gas, but it isn't generally shown on signs or receipts so it's out of sight and out of mind. But if I am being charged a tax based on how many miles I drive, now I'm going to glare at my odometer every time I get in my car and think "every time that thing ticks up another mile, it's more money out of my pocket". And then feel like the government is constantly, slowly sucking my money away as I drive.

In a future where a gas tax is not a viable means of obtaining funding for highways because everyone has electric cars, it seems to me that the logical thing to do is just tax electricity instead. Then you only have to worry about collecting from utilities, and it preserves the perception of it being out of sight and just an ordinary cost of living.

[Rothman]

Fine.  Tax the gas.  Get rid of the tolls.

[corco]

- it is psychologically much more difficult to ignore. I know that I have to put gas in my car but it's a thing I do every so often and I just consider it a cost of living. Some tax is included in the price of the gas, but it isn't generally shown on signs or receipts so it's out of sight and out of mind. But if I am being charged a tax based on how many miles I drive, now I'm going to glare at my odometer every time I get in my car and think "every time that thing ticks up another mile, it's more money out of my pocket". And then feel like the government is constantly, slowly sucking my money away as I drive.

And that may not be a problem- if we're actually paying the true cost to drive (complete with varying tax rates depending on peak/off-peak driving and vehicle curb weight), we should be aware of how much it actually costs to pay for our share of road infrastructure. When it's like the gas tax, where it's out of sight and out of mind, I think people lose understanding of how expensive it actually is to have and maintain roads. That could change behavior to cause society to function more efficiently (telecommuting, more varied business hours, etc), which should be something we encourage.

Honestly, we as cars subsidize trucks, so if suddenly trucks were paying VMT relative to their weight and the damage they do, while cars do the same, that could also encourage things like more localized production (because if we paid for the actual cost of ground shipping, products would be a lot more expensive) that can help boost and diversify local economies.

That said, I am not interested in a government GPS tracking my every move and taxing me for it, so I have no idea what the solution is. Maybe the solution is something like your car logging your motions between refuels, then when you go to the gas station/charging station, the pump mechanism pulls that data, charges the tax since last refuel, and deletes the data. Obviously that still requires more trust than more people may be comfortable with.

[froggie]

- it is psychologically much more difficult to ignore. I know that I have to put gas in my car but it's a thing I do every so often and I just consider it a cost of living. Some tax is included in the price of the gas, but it isn't generally shown on signs or receipts so it's out of sight and out of mind. But if I am being charged a tax based on how many miles I drive, now I'm going to glare at my odometer every time I get in my car and think "every time that thing ticks up another mile, it's more money out of my pocket". And then feel like the government is constantly, slowly sucking my money away as I drive.

This bullet highlights exactly why the average American driver has A) no clue about the full cost of driving, and B) the actual cost of road infrastructure.  (A) because it's a "hidden tax", and (B) in part because the gas tax does not cover the full cost of roads and highways.  Not by a longshot.

[Duke87]

And that may not be a problem- if we're actually paying the true cost to drive (complete with varying tax rates depending on peak/off-peak driving and vehicle curb weight), we should be aware of how much it actually costs to pay for our share of road infrastructure. When it's like the gas tax, where it's out of sight and out of mind, I think people lose understanding of how expensive it actually is to have and maintain roads. That could change behavior to cause society to function more efficiently (telecommuting, more varied business hours, etc), which should be something we encourage.

You have more faith in humanity than I do. If you make the cost of maintaining roads more visible, you might make people change some habits, yes. But you would also inevitably create a lot of pressure from people to keep the tax low - possibly unsustainably low. We're already seeing this with the federal gas tax, it badly needs to be raised but no one dares touch it. Do you really think it wouldn't be worse with a per mile tax? Putting the cost of maintaining roads in people's faces is just going to create sticker shock and accelerate the decay of our infrastructure as people become even less willing to pay for it.

As for varied business hours and such, I don't know that that's necessarily as lovely a thing as you might think either. Currently major cities have their rush hours but outside of them when not too many people are commuting traffic more or less moves well. A staggering of business hours so they're all over the place will likely in many cities result in traffic congestion being something which is just constant all day rather than largely limited to a couple bands of time in the morning and evening. Which, while it may enable more people to commute on the same roads, is hardly an increase in overall societal efficiency since it results in more time and energy lost to congestion and more pollution created by it.

And, speaking as someone who has been telecommuting on a mostly daily basis for more than a year, let me tell you - it ain't all it's cracked up to be. Without needing to get out the door and be in the office by a certain time, I find myself lacking motivation to get up in the morning. With work and pleasure done in the same location, the line between them becomes blurred and both become less satisfying and less productive. And with spending so much of my time at home, the resulting cabin fever can become downright maddening. Telecommuting may reduce transportation demand and, if people were robots, be a no brainer to make the norm. But people are not robots. People are humans, and it isn't healthy for us psychologically.

[The Nature Boy]

I am just going to point out that a VMT tax would royally screw over those of us in rural areas. I have a relatively short commute but the nature of my work takes me out into the field a lot and I put a lot of my miles on my car doing so. If I had a comparable job in Boston, I'd ride the T to where I have to go because the population density is greater but in Maine, I could easily drive 50 miles a day just driving around doing visits.

Honestly, I don't believe that we should pay the "true cost" of driving. For a huge portion of this country, driving is our only way to get around. If we change our habits then we aren't going to work or we aren't going to the store or we aren't doing basic human functions. We have a gas tax, maybe raise it a bit but the whole idea of attaching some high tax to driving just assumes that some of us have other options. We don't.

[Rothman]

Putting the cost of maintaining roads in people's faces is just going to create sticker shock and accelerate the decay of our infrastructure as people become even less willing to pay for it.

I don't understand how tolling doesn't have the same effect (it's too late to avoid the double negative).  The cost of the toll is also put right in your face and the public authorities, when raising tolls, are less accountable to any level of government than government transportation agencies (I remember sitting in a meeting with an official from the NYS Dormitory Authority and he proudly proclaimed that public authorities in NY are, in essence, engineering to be autonomous from government).

We've already gone down the road of tolling everything in the United States -- that's why there are all those old roads that are named turnpikes, at least back east.  The inefficiencies of private toll roads led to the first efforts to fund transportation at a federal level through taxes.

Then again, I do like how there were people that would just set up a toll gate without any actual authority to do so on the road running alongside their property.

Anyway, that's what astounds me about the push to go back to tolling: We've tried it already and it sucks, say all you want about modern, electronic tolling systems.  Now, we have this uncoordinated mishmash of tolled facilities and tax-funded facilities that just isn't getting the job done comprehensively, at least in recent years.

I suppose one of the other reasons I lean towards taxing rather than tolling is because my perception is that taxes are simply more fair across economic classes.  Slapping a toll on a facility while continuing to gather gas taxes slaps poorer classes with an additional economic burden that is a larger percentage of their income than it is for higher classes.  Just seems to lead to transportation facilities where only those who can afford to ride on them may do so -- Lexus lanes?  Try Lexus bridges, tunnels and turnpikes.

Just hit us all with a tax rate increase.  Creating facilities to be used mostly by the middle and upper classes is just crass.

[The Nature Boy]

Putting the cost of maintaining roads in people's faces is just going to create sticker shock and accelerate the decay of our infrastructure as people become even less willing to pay for it.

I don't understand how tolling doesn't have the same effect (it's too late to avoid the double negative).  The cost of the toll is also put right in your face and the public authorities, when raising tolls, are less accountable to any level of government than government transportation agencies (I remember sitting in a meeting with an official from the NYS Dormitory Authority and he proudly proclaimed that public authorities in NY are, in essence, engineering to be autonomous from government).

We've already gone down the road of tolling everything in the United States -- that's why there are all those old roads that are named turnpikes, at least back east.  The inefficiencies of private toll roads led to the first efforts to fund transportation at a federal level through taxes.

Then again, I do like how there were people that would just set up a toll gate without any actual authority to do so on the road running alongside their property.

Anyway, that's what astounds me about the push to go back to tolling: We've tried it already and it sucks, say all you want about modern, electronic tolling systems.  Now, we have this uncoordinated mishmash of tolled facilities and tax-funded facilities that just isn't getting the job done comprehensively, at least in recent years.

I suppose one of the other reasons I lean towards taxing rather than tolling is because my perception is that taxes are simply more fair across economic classes.  Slapping a toll on a facility while continuing to gather gas taxes slaps poorer classes with an additional economic burden that is a larger percentage of their income than it is for higher classes.  Just seems to lead to transportation facilities where only those who can afford to ride on them may do so -- Lexus lanes?  Try Lexus bridges, tunnels and turnpikes.

Just hit us all with a tax rate increase.  Creating facilities to be used mostly by the middle and upper classes is just crass.

Tolls, at least in New Hampshire and Maine, serve the purpose of capturing money from tourists who are driving into the state and using the roads. I-95 in NH might as well be called the "The Massachusetts-Maine Turnpike" because it's a 15 mile connector between the two states. The Maine Turnpike only exists south of Augusta and if you're going between Augusta and Portland, I-295 is a free bypass of the Turnpike. The more rural parts of the state aren't burdened by tolls because they're designed to be clustered in the southern part of the state so they grab tourists. The more affluent parts of Maine have tolls, the poorest parts don't. It works out. Also, even the Maine Turnpike's positioning in the Lewiston/Auburn area helps grab tourists. If you're somehow coming in from the east from the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, you have to hop on the Maine Turnpike to get to a lot of the northern most areas of the state.

I'm not a huge fan of toll lanes for the reasons that you mentioned though. Virginia has basically created a system were the well-off can pay to bypass most of the Beltway traffic en route to DC. That's just bad policy, in my mind.

I do think though that we do have to subsidize the cost of rural road maintenance. Rural areas cost more in infrastructure because they're more spread out. They also tend to be poorer so hitting them with the "fair cost of driving" would hurt them tremendously.