The average car carried 1.54 people in 2017 while the average SUV carried 1.84 people according to the just-released National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). That’s down slightly from 2009, when it was 1.59 and 1.92 respectively. Historically, auto occupancies have declined in parallel with the decline in household and family sizes; the 2009 survey reported a rare increase but the 2017 decline is not surprising.
The “explore data” button on the NHTS home page allows users to construct a huge variety of data tables. For example, I created a table showing miles of driving per driver by household income and urban area size. Annual miles of driving were roughly the same for all levels of income above $35,000 per year. In smaller urban areas, only people in households with incomes below $15,000 per year did significantly less driving, while people in households with incomes more than $150,000 did a little more driving. Variations by urban area size were small, though large urban areas with heavy rail had about 13 percent less driving than large urban areas without heavy rail; probably that result is driven by New York City.
Vehicle occupancies varied widely by trip purpose, ranging from 1.18 for work trips to 2.57 for recreation trips. However, occupancies seem to be independent of income. Continue reading
