Americans Are Driving at Historic Lows

Continuing a trend that began in November, Americans are driving less, a lot less, than they did a year ago according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) (report, pdf). How much less? Eleven billion miles less in March 2008 than they did in March of 2007.

That's a 4.3 percent drop. It's the first time traffic fell for the month of March since 1979 and it's the sharpest drop in recorded history.

You can see the level has been leveling off the past few years in the graph created using data from the report (see link above).

February actually showed a 1 billion mile increase, but cumulative mileage since November 2006 has shown a 17.3 billion mile drop.

The estimated data show that VMT on all U.S. public roads have dropped since 2006. The FHWA's Traffic Monitoring Analysis System (TMAS) computes VMT for all types of motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, buses and trucks) on the nation's public roads. These data are collected through over 4,000 automatic traffic recorders operated round-the-clock by state highway agencies. More comprehensive data are published in the FHWA's "Highway Statistics" at the end of each year.

It's not hard to guess at why people are driving less, either.