January 2021 Driving Down by 11.7 Percent

Americans drove 88.7 percent as many miles in January 2021 as in the same month of 2020, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. That’s down slightly from 89.7 percent in December.

Looking at the above chart, it is amazing how stable everything has become. Driving has hovered within 2 percentage points of 89 percent since June. Transit has hovered within 2 percentage points of 36 percent since July. Flying has hovered within 4 percentage points of 36 percent since September. With the exception of September when it reached 31 percent, Amtrak has hovered within 4 percentage points of 26 percent since June. Continue reading

December 2020 Driving Down 10.3 Percent

Americans drove 89.7 percent as many miles in December 2020 as they did in December 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. This compares with transit and air travel, which were each about 37.5 percent of 2019 levels, and Amtrak, which was 22.4 percent of 2019. These numbers continue to demonstrate that motor vehicles and highways are the most resilient forms of travel we have.

This is an update of a chart that appeared in a recent Antiplanner policy brief. In that brief, I estimated that December driving would be 89 percent of 2019 levels, but it turned out to be a little higher.

Driving was down more in urban areas than in rural areas and it was down more on interstate highways, both urban and rural, and the least on collectors and local roads and streets. The biggest drops in driving were in Hawaii (-20.2%), Vermont (-20.2%), Massachusetts (-18.0%), Minnesota (-17.8%), and New Jersey (-17.7%). The smallest declines were in Arkansas (-0.9%), Tennessee (-2.5%), Wyoming (-2.8%), Arizona (-3.5%), and Mississippi (-3.6%). Surprisingly, California saw only a 9.9 percent drop (10.9% in urban areas), probably because all of the people who are supposedly working at home are driving to coffee shops and other places in the afternoons. Continue reading

November Driving 89% of 2019

After two months of driving slightly more than 90 percent of 2019 levels, driving fell to 88.9 percent in November, 2020, according to traffic trends published Friday by the Federal Highway Administration. The slight reduction in driving was due to the second wave of state-ordered lockdowns that took place in November.

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Urban driving declined the most, being about 87 percent of 2019 levels while rural driving was about 92 percent. Arizona and Louisiana actually saw slight increases in rural driving but no states saw increases in urban driving. By comparison, urban transit and the airlines both carried only 37 percent of 2019 riders in November 2020, while Amtrak carried just 26 percent of its 2020 ridership.

November Ridership Down 63 Percent

Transit ridership in November 2020 was 63.1 percent less than in 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. That was down from October, which was 62.7 percent less than in 2019, and September, which was 62.0 percent less than in 2019. These numbers are preliminary as a few agencies may not have submitted their November ridership numbers in time for this report, but ridership has been stuck at around 37 percent of 2019 numbers since July.

While private businesses have scrambled to cut costs in response to the pandemic, transit agencies continue to operate at 80 percent of 2019 levels. Agencies, of course, received a $25 billion bailout from Congress in April. Since total transit fares were only about $16 billion in 2019, most of this bailout was predicated on the assumption that the state and local taxes that transit agencies rely on would significantly drop due to the pandemic and associated shutdowns.

In fact, state and local tax revenues in the first nine months of 2020 were just 1 percent less than in the same period in 2019. While we don’t yet have exact data for transit systems, it seems likely that transit agencies were awash with cash in 2020 due to the huge federal bailout. This allowed them to maintain service at 80 percent of 2019 levels despite losing more than half of their riders over the year. Continue reading

October 2020 Driving 91.2% of 2019

Americans drove 91.2 percent as many miles in October 2020 as they did in October 2019, according to data released Monday by the Federal Highway Administration. This isn’t quite as good as the September release, which reported 91.4 percent as much driving. However, the FHwA has revised September numbers slightly so that both September and October driving were 91.2 percent as much as the same months in 2019.

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This allows me to update the chart tracking transportation use by various modes during the pandemic. The chart indicates that air travel is growing but other modes appear to have leveled off. We will find out next month whether these trends continue through November.

Roads Carried 98.4% of Urban Travel in 2019

Motorized travel, that is; we don’t have good numbers for walking and cycling. However, in continuing its incremental publication of Highway Statistics 2019, the Federal Highway Administration yesterday posted miles of driving and other data for the nation’s 495 urban areas. Since transit passenger miles for each of the urban areas are in the National Transit Database, we can calculate transit’s share of motorized travel.

To do this, I’ve created a slightly enhanced spreadsheet for table HM-72. First, I put all of the urban areas on one worksheet; the FHwA version divides them into seven worksheets, which can make it hard to find some of the smaller urban areas.

Second, I updated the population data using the Census Bureau’s 2019 estimates; I think the population numbers in HM-72 are based on the 2010 census. Unfortunately, the Census Bureau doesn’t seem to have yet calculated population numbers for most urban areas with under 65,000 people and a few bigger ones, but I included the ones that are available. Continue reading

Transportation & the Pandemic

As noted here previously, Americans are driving at least 90 percent as much as they were before the pandemic, while transit ridership seems stuck at around 37 percent. The Federal Highway Administration hasn’t yet posted driving data for October, but I’ve used data from Amtrak monthly performance reports and the Transportation Security Administration to track what has happened to intercity rail and air travel.

As the chart shows, air travel is also at 37 percent but, unlike transit, it is growing. Amtrak slowly grew to 24 percent by September but remained there in October. Continue reading

October Ridership Still Just 37% of 2019

Transit ridership in October 2020 was just 37.1 percent of October 2019 numbers, according to data posted Friday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is only a tiny improvement from September, when ridership was 36.9 percent of September 2019.

Despite the huge decline in ridership, transit agencies are still maintaining service at 75 percent of 2019 levels. Transit in the New York urban area, where ridership is down 62.4 percent, is running at 85 percent of 2019 levels. Agencies say they are doing this to allow for “social distancing,” but it is more likely that they are spending the money to keep union workers employed and to justify their parasitical existence.

Among major urban areas, the biggest change is in the San Francisco Bay Area, where ridership is just 23 percent of 2019 levels. At 25 percent, Washington is second followed by Boston, Sacramento, and San Jose, all of which are around 30 percent. Continue reading

September Driving Exceeds 90% of 2019

The number of miles Americans drove in September was just 8.6 percent less than in September, 2019, according to data released last Friday by the Federal Highway Administration. This is the first month since February of this year that driving rose above 90 percent of last year’s levels. This contrasts to transit ridership, which, as noted here last week, remains 62 percent below 2019 levels.

Driving remains lowest, relative to 2019, in Hawaii, which is still down 31.5 percent due to less tourism. The other states with double-digit drops are Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, O Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia, all of which are between 10 and 15 percent down. Driving in Montana is actually 2 percent greater than it was in 2019, and driving in Idaho and South Dakota are within 1 percent of 2019 levels.
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Urban driving is down by a little more than 10 percent while rural driving is down by only 5 percent. Rural driving is greater than in 2019 in Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota and within 1 percent of 2019 in Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, and Utah.

Transit’s Diminishing Returns in 2019

The nation’s transit industry carried 19 million more trips in 2019 than in 2018, representing a 0.2 percent increase in ridership, according to the 2019 National Transit Database that was posted by the Federal Transit Administration last week. To get that increase, transit agencies had to spend 5 percent more on operating costs and increased capital spending by more than 10 percent.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

While even a 0.2 percent increase would have been welcome to a transit industry that had seen declines in each of the previous four years, the reality is that ridership declined in the vast majority of urban areas, and it took a 92-million trip increase in the New York urban area to overcome all of those declines. New York ridership had been depressed in 2018 due to delays caused by work being done on the city’s subway system, so the growth in 2019 was due more to the end of such work rather than any real recovery in transit ridership. Continue reading