At the request of the Swedish Road Administration, a model for the average mileage covered by cars in Sweden has been developed. Combined with the car ownership model reported in "VTI Rapport 301", the present model forms an analytical tool for forecasting the aggregate car traffic on our roads. Like most other car usage models, the model presented here seeks to determine the effect of the principal economic factors, i.e. the price of fuel and the purchasing power of households, on the mileage per car. The distinguishing features of the model are: (1) Private consumption (rather than income) is taken to represent purchasing power, and (2) Comparatively large efforts have been made in order to ascertain the effect been made in order to ascertain the effect of the widening in present car ownership on the average level of car usage. (The ownership of cars is widening through the rapid growth in the number of second cars and the increase in car ownership among retired people). The main results consist of a series of estimates of mileage elasticity. One of our most important data bases has consisted of cross-section data from the Family Expenditure Surveys of 1969, 1978 and 1985. The arrangement of this material has provided us with further interesting information, most of which can be found in the Appendix. An example of such information is that women and elderly people use their cars less extensively than other car owners. (A)
Abstract