Report: America’s Love Affair With Cars is Ending
According to a just-released report from the well-respected Brookings Institution, the US is experiencing its longest and quickest decline in the amount of driving since World War Two — a decline which the report’s authors claim marks a permanent shift away from the automobile and towards other forms of transportation.
The report, The Road… Less Traveled: An Analysis of Vehicle Miles Traveled Trends in the U.S., points out that the beginning of the current decline in driving predated the high gas prices of last summer and, as gas prices have come back down over the last few months, drivers are not going back to their cars (click the graph below for an expanded view of these statistics).
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As Robert Puentes, co-author of the report says, “With important conversations underway on infrastructure spending as economic stimulus, it’s critical for the new Congress and administration to recognize the long-term implications of these travel trends and to use this as an occasion to put forth a new vision that reflects new realities and is not just more of the same.”
I’m excited that we finally seem to have realized we need to fix and expand our embarrassingly decrepit infrastructure here in the US, but I get worried when it seems like the majority of what we’re going to do is patch up existing roads and build new ones.
What if we did that and then 20 years from now people were driving half as much as they are even today? We would have wasted a ton of resources on the wrong thing.
In trying to tease out the reasons why the decline has been so steep and persistent even without the recent gas price pressure, the authors identify several:
- Market saturation of vehicle ownership
- A plateau in the number of women entering the workforce
- A possible ceiling in the amount of driving any one individual can tolerate
- Increased ridership on mass transit
- The development of commercial centers closer to home
- Rising unemployment
One result of such a precipituous drop in driving in the US is that revenues to repair and expand our transportation infrastructure have dried up. Most of those types of projects are funded from the various federal and state gas taxes, and with fewer drivers on the road driving less miles, those funds are at all-time lows.
According to Adie Tomer, the other report co-author, “As gas tax receipts plummet, we will have to get smarter about how we spend our transportation dollars. We cannot afford to build more roads that people simply will not use. We run the very real risk of severely misallocating scarce resources.”
I, for one, would gladly give up my daily car commute for a high speed train ride where I can surf the internet and listen to music. Who’s with me?
Image Credits: Road from Nicholas_T’s Flickr photostream under a Creative Commons License. Graph from report referred to in this post.
Source: Green Car Congress
Sorry, I don’t buy the author’s conclusion.
I am willing to believe that miles driven will stay lower than in 2007 or at least not climb back to previous levels. But a 50% decline over the next 20 years? Dream on.
Our public transportation system sucks (and I say this as one who takes PT to work every day and used Amtrak for a trip from Chicago to NYC in 2007) and there just isn’t a practical way for most people to get to and from work and shopping except via car.
The typical new driver today has always been chauffered by a parent wherever they needed to go. Little Johnny and Jane fully expect to get a license whent they turn 16 and have access to a car.
The decline in miles was simply a short term decline in discretionary driving. If the 2008 spike in gas prices proves to be just that, a one time spike, people will go right back to using their cars to retreive the mail from the box at the end of the driveway.
Any long term change in driving habits will have to come from changing the attitude of today’s tweens so that by the time they are driving they are not thinking car first.
D Palmer,
1 - I said “What if we did that and then 20 years from now people were driving half as much as they are even today?”… as in “hypothetically.” “What if” implies “hypothetically.” Nobody is saying that’s what going to happen, I was asking “what if,” and posed potentially the worst case scenario.
2 - Amtrak had the highest ridership ever over the last year. While I agree that our mass transit system sucks, that’s not the point, the point is that we should make it better cause there’s clearly a desire.
3 - Did you even read the whole post? The reasons given for the decline have very little to do with gas prices and much more to do with trends such as market saturation of vehicle ownership, and no more women entering the workforce (that has plateaued). If you think about it, these two things alone make great sense and are undeniable.
The recent gas price spike was just enough to send what had already been a stagnation of driving growth in this country over the last 5 years down a precipitous drop.
“Love Affair Ending” seems like a sensationalized conclusion to a 5% decline. What facts support a structural change, and not just the normal reaction to higher prices and economic slowdown? The chart is the only fact presented, and it shows the expected inverse relationship between price and volume.
Personally, I hate driving because of the crowding in urban areas. I would like nothing more than to see major changes in infrastructure and consumer behavior. However, until this nation spends $10s of trillions on light rail over a period of 40 years, there can only be minimal change.
As a cynic, I suspect the Bookings Institution may be seeding articles like this to sabotage efforts to upgrade infrastructure. Much like the auto industry did decades ago to get rid of mass transit that they considered competition. I am not criticizing Mr. Chambers, who is just reporting the news. Deception is the most potent weapon and we must at least be wary of the possibilities.
My god Mark, why the heck do you have to come out swinging? The only two comments I’ve ever seen you post to this website and you’re coming off as a jerk. For context, see his other comment here:
http://gas2.org/2008/12/17/little-known-automaker-byd-introduces-plug-in-hybrid-vehicle/#comment-41225
This is a blog, I summarized the salient points of the entire paper which is 40-plus pages. If you want details, you can click on the link to the report in the body of my post. I can assure you they have plenty of mind numbing stats in the actual report. You can also do your own research on the Brookings Institution because it sounds like, before today, you had never heard of them.
BTW, love affair ending were the words of the lead author on the report.
“A possible ceiling in the amount of driving any one individual can tolerate”
Related to this one is dwindling traffic jam tolerance. When I lived in Cincinnati a traffic jam
(usually caused by an accident or construction) could cause my 30 minute commute to become 90 (stressful) minutes. That was 15 years ago, now there are probably a lot more cars on the road then there was back then.
Personally, I would like to see a tax shift from income and payroll taxes to gas taxes. That would discourage “bad” behavior of consuming foreign petroleum while encouraging employment (productivity).
I hope this article holds true. When someone figures out how to build an affordable Tesla Roadster there will be more room on the roads for me.
I think for this to happen, there needs to be a paradigm shift in the way people choose to live - higher population densities, mixed residential / commercial / industrial uses, etc. - basically new urbanism.
The problem is that right now, many people would prefer not to live this way. They’ve been born in and will retire in suburban areas where they’re accustomed to commuting between suburbs for work, shopping, pleasure, etc. They appreciate having a yard with a fence around it.
To change this would require an enormous investment in infrastructure, not to mention a ton of public education. Could it happen? Yes. Will it happen soon? Probably not. We won’t know until the current generation is in the history books.
Changes in urbanization also have an influence. In the past decade, Houston and Dallas have experienced a lot of residential growth and development in and around their downtown areas, as more and more people are moving inward. In the decades before suburbs rapidly expanded outward. You have suburbs that are now an hour away from downtown. The bulk of traffic are those thousands of suburbians sitting bumper to bumper for 2-3 hours each day as they go back and forth to work.
4 day work weeks has shown to be a great alternative. Not only do people use less gas, save money, and help the environment at the same time, it may also help improve the quality of life for many people.
The reason I don’t see this happening anytime soon is the fact it has to be done by the govt. Private companies are not going to invest in mass transit and that is the only way to truly develop an effective and cost efficient system. The US needs to develop a truly national transit system, but that is an extremely daunting task considering the shear scale of our country. I actually think the title of this article is spot on because America has lost its love affair with driving. As a country we used to love to go for a drive, but now we drive because we must. It has switched from a hot new girlfriend to an old nagging wife.