A Little Victory

According to both the 2009 and 2017 National Household Travel Survey, automobiles in the United States carry an average of 1.67 people (see page 58). Yet for table VM-1 of the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Statistics annual reports, the Obama administration arbitrarily reduced this number to 1.38.

When this first appeared in the 2009 Highway Statistics report, I contacted the Federal Highway Administration to find out why they made the change. I was told that the lower number was based on then-latest 2009 National Household Travel Survey. When I pointed out that the survey found 1.67 people per vehicle, they said this number was “miles-weighted,” and if it were weighted by trips, it would be lower. When I expressed doubts that the difference would be that great, the person who I was communicating with insisted that he had a spreadsheet proving that the lower number was correct. When I asked him for a copy of that spreadsheet, he refused to give it to me, saying it was proprietary.

Since I used this number to calculate passenger miles, the mile-weighted method made more sense anyway. This meant that, whenever I wanted to quote passenger miles data, I would have to recalculate the numbers instead of relying on table VM-1, and then provide a justification for my recalculation.

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I suspect the Obama administration used the lower number because it wanted to de-emphasize the importance of automobile travel relative to transit, Amtrak, and other alternatives. If so, it was a pointless exercise, as even at the lower occupancies auto travel swamps every other kind of travel in the United States. In 2014, for example, at the lower occupancy rate, autos would be calculated to provide about 74 percent of all travel (not counting walking and cycling, which aren’t estimated in the federal reports); at the higher rate, autos provide 77 percent.

By the way, despite all the planning emphasis on transit and intercity rail, the only mode that is significantly eating into the automobile’s share of mobility is air travel. Since 2010, domestic airline passenger miles have grown by 22 percent while auto passenger miles have grown by less than 10 percent. In any case, it is nice to see that the Department of Transportation today is using more realistic data for its reports.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

One Response to A Little Victory

  1. metrosucks says:

    Mr. O’Toole,

    the end is in sight. At sunset on a clear late August day, it’s that mountain peak you can barely see 100 miles away from the top of South Sister.

    We’re getting there, and that’s why the opposition is ramping up its propaganda and squirreling away as many horribly wasteful transit boondoggles as possible. They know the good times can’t last forever.

    We just need to be patient, and you need to keep putting up these posts and your studies & newspaper editorials that contradict the lies from the transit oligarchy.

    Thank you for doing your part. Without your work, the entire NW would likely be one massive clear-cut, and we’d be paying $2000 a year for car registration, to pay for worthless toy trains.

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