Sightline breaks down the stats and finds that per-person vehicle travel (not just total miles driven, which has declined dramatically in the last year as gas prices have spiked) has been declining steadily for more than a decade. Just another reason the people who scream that we can’t possibly live without a waterfront freeway/eight-lane 520 bridge/more capacity for single-occupant cars on every project ever are willfully ignoring actual human behavior. The only way you can argue that driving will continue to increase in this century is to believe, against all evidence, that humans have no capacity to change.

Wonkery, and caveats, here.

4 replies on “You Had Me At “Federal Highway Statistics reports””

  1. Holy selective conclusions, Batman.

    Total miles driven in WA has increased since 1999. Much of the difference in the created ‘miles per capita’ metric can be explained by the fact that there are significantly more people in WA with drivers licences per capita in the state than before (an increase of around 5% in the incidence of licensing.)

    Yes, you can conclude that the population of WA has changed. It is very much less clear exactly WHY miles/capita declined – but growth in population + an increase in licensed drivers/capita would produce a very similar effect on this plot.

  2. Humans can totally change. Elves and halflings whatnot are kind of stuck. They can be multiclassed but once they start off as a fighter/thief or whatever, that’s it. Forever. But humans? They can change.

  4. @1 Exactly. Decline in per capita miles is probably not greater than the offset by the growth in population. If we take the numbers straight from the graph:

    530000 * 9700 = 5.141 billion miles.
    592800 * 9200 = 5.454 billion miles.

    So, the total mileage is going up. Which means that more cars are on the road at any given time. Which means more traffic jams. Which means that less people are willing to drive when they don’t need to. Which means that they might be cooped up and miserable. NOT TO MENTION that the daily commute from one side of the water is at least an hour of sitting…at least it was every day last week. Which means more cars are driving at high times, and fewer at lower times, which increases congestion and pollution far more than if people drove normally on larger highways.

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