After sixty years of almost constant increases in the annual number of miles Americans drive, since 2004 Americans have decreased their driving per-capita for eight years in a row. Driving miles per person are down especially sharply among Millennials, America’s largest generation that will increasingly dominate national transportation trends. But some skeptics have suggested that the apparent end of the Driving Boom might be just a temporary hiccup in the trend toward more driving for Americans. By the time Americans took notice of the decline in driving, the economy was in deep recession. Would economic growth bring back rapid increases in driving? Doubts about whether the Driving Boom has ended make it easier to postpone choices about transforming our transportation system or en-acting reforms that disrupt well-established interest groups. Forty-six states plus the District of Columbia witnessed a reduction in the average number of driving miles per person since the end of the national Driving Boom. North Dakota, Nevada, Louisiana and Alabama are the only states in the nation where driving miles per capita in 2011 were above their 2004 or 2005 peaks. Mean-while, since 2005, double-digit percent reductions occurred in a diverse collection of states: Alaska, Delaware, Oregon, Georgia, Wyoming, South Carolina, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Florida. The fifty states plus the District of Columbia offer a useful natural experiment to examine different factors behind America’s reduction in driving since 2004. Examining the commonalities and differences in driving trends among states can provide insight into the potential causes behind the downturn in driving and the direction of future trends. While a number of factors will influence the amount of driving in any given state, to the extent that differences in driving trends among the fifty states correlate with differences in the severity of the economic downturn, then the economy could be seen as the dominant factor and future driving trends could be expected to follow the economy as well. In that case, a return to faster economic growth might likely lead to a rapid increase in driving. If instead the extent that differences between states’ trends in the amount of driving reflect other kinds of persistent factors or can’t be easily explained, then we can expect the slowdown in driving to persist even if the economy speeds up. (Author/publisher)
Abstract