March Driving 2% More Than Before the Pandemic

Americans drove 2.1 percent more miles in March 2022 than in March 2019, thus returning to more than 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to data released late last week by the Federal Highway Administration. Driving first exceeded 100 percent of pre-pandemic in July 2021 and remained above 100 percent through the end of the year. It then dipped below 100 percent in January and February, but now is back above 100 percent.

See this post for sources of data for air, transit, and Amtrak.

As noted here before, air travel is approaching 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, while Amtrak is still below 70 percent and transit has just barely breeched 60 percent. I suspect transit will fall below 60 percent in April as March 2022 had two more work days than March 2019 while April 2022 had one fewer work day than April 2019.

As the chart shows, all forms of travel dipped in January 2022, probably due to a spike in the omicron variant of COVID. Travel didn’t fully recover in February, partly because I’m comparing February 2022 with February 2020, which had shown considerable growth over the previous year. Since pandemic-related lockdowns began in March 2020, I have to compare March 2022 with March 2019, which means that what year-on-year growth would have taken place between 2019 and 2020 isn’t included.

March driving exceeded pre-pandemic levels on both urban and rural roads and in more than half the states. States with the greatest increase include Montana (24%), Indiana (18%), Idaho and Rhode Island (16%), Louisiana and Arizona (15%), and Connecticut and Missouri (14%). States that are still short of pre-pandemic levels include West Virginia (-22%), North Dakota (-17%), New York (-15%), and Vermont (-11%). California exceeded pre-pandemic miles of driving for the first time, but only by 0.3 percent.