The New Year brings a number of news reports fretting (or hoping) that the amount of travel we do has peaked or plateaued. Given that cars are becoming more fuel-efficient, that means that the total amount of energy we use driving will significantly decline. However, the real implications of the claim are far more dire.
The news reports are actually based on a paper published by researchers at Stanford University more than a year ago. The researchers followed the time-honored technique of looking at past data trends, drawing a dotted line into the future, and claiming it as a prediction. Reality is somewhat more complicated.
A much more interesting report, published more than a decade ago by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, compared population and job densities with travel behavior in 31 cities. “Land use, at least at the aggregate level studied here, is not a major leverage point in the determination of overall population travel choices,” the study found. “On the one hand, certain relationships emerge which correspond to generally held beliefs, for example that high residential concentration increases transit share,” though it did not reduce driving or congestion. “On the other hand, aggregate land use characteristics had little or no discernable impact on other measures of travel behavior.”
“Much policy seems to be based on the belief that relatively small changes to land use will have a big impact on travel choices,” the study concluded. “The findings here imply just the opposite; that even very big, widespread differences in land use have very little impact on travel behavior, in good ways or in bad.”
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If you believe the travel minimization theory, then you might agree that packing more land uses into a given amount of land will allow people to travel less. The time budget theory, however, suggests that people are going to spend time traveling every day irrespective of land uses. While the Minnesota paper does not firmly conclude that either theory is perfect, it does find that “The evidence comes down pretty strongly on the side of travel time budgets.”
If the time budget theory is right, then travel increases mainly by increasing average travel speeds. Conversely, we reach peak travel only if average speeds stop increasing. This seems to be the case. “My basic thesis is, ‘There ain’t room on the road,'” says the author of the peak-travel paper. In other words, travel has peaked because congestion has slowed people down, and they can’t travel more without exceeding their time budgets.
Rather than cheering this result, transportation planners should do everything they can to make sure peak travel doesn’t happen anytime soon. Increased travel speeds in the 20th century led to unprecedented increases in productivity, incomes, and personal freedom. Stagnant travel speeds will lead to a stagnant economy and a stagnant society.
Instead of building streetcars, light rail, and other archaic and slow substitutes for driving on congested highways, planners should work to reduce that congestion. One way is to remove bottlenecks; another is to use congestion pricing, which actually increases the capacity of roads to move travel during rush-hour periods. Driverless cars will be a longer-run solution that could lead to a huge increase in travel and all the benefits it provides.
Stagnant travel speeds will lead to a stagnant economy and a stagnant society.
But that is exactly what the smart growth crowd wants. They think the world must be de-industrialized to save it.
The do not care about the people that will be harmed. Just like they don’t care about the people they are harming today.
Thanks
JK
If this is correct, under the current system of funding capital and operating subsidies for transit in most of the United States, we can anticipate less money (as in money diverted from highway users) will be available to transit.
we can anticipate less money (as in money diverted from highway users) will be available to transit.
Of course that is a good thing as transit costs more than driving, is slower and uses more energy. The needy can be better served with other options.
Thanks
JK
Streamlining traffic through the methods the AP mentioned to meet demand would work well in an overwhelming majority of metropolitan areas, but for the largest metro areas (in terms of population and area) such as Los Angeles, New York, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, South Florida, etc. which are saturated with large-capacity freeways that have little to no room for expansion in many areas, it would only do little good. In such areas (but only such areas), perhaps peak travel is occurring naturally and/or is inevitable.
The time budget theory is an interesting counter-intuitive idea.
I think the “travel time budget” theory is correct.
However, the fact that travel distances increased fairly steadily in lockstep with economic growth does prove that this was the driver (sic) of economic growth. I think the “direction of causation” is the oppposite, e.g., people became more affluent and they consume more, e.g., such as drive longer distances, buy bigger houses in more dispersed suburban areas, etc.
The Swiss overall are more affluent that the U.S. when adjusted for spending power parity. But auto usage still accounts for less than 50% of their total trip-making, e.g., large percentages of their travel is by transit, walking and bicycling.
The Autoplanner also cannot explain why at the same general level of affluence/income in different countries, the relative level of driving is consistently much lower than the U.S., e.g., to produce a given level of affluence, it seems Americans must drive a lot farther than the same income groups in various European countries.
Hmmnnn…perhaps the U.S. economy is less efficient in key ways, like we use far more oil per dollar of GNP, among other things??
In all his claims about travel over the years, The Autoplanner has yet to show how a given auto trip for a given purpose is more valuable than a given auto trip for the same purpose, on the basis that the typical auto trip is much longer in terms of passenger miles than walking. I’d really like to see peer-reviewed paper(s) that back up this sweeping claim by The Autoplanner.
That is, of course…
…In all his claims about travel over the years, The Autoplanner has yet to show how a given auto trip for a given purpose is more valuable than a given WALKING trip for the same purpose, on the basis that the typical auto trip is much longer in terms of passenger miles than walking. I’d really like to see peer-reviewed paper(s) that back up this sweeping claim by The Autoplanner.
Lost in all of this hand-wringing about “peak travel” is the possible benefits of travel substitutes, such as videoconferencing and telecommuting. As communications technology improves we can expect these travel substitutes to both reduce travel and improve our lives. An example is reservation agents working from home instead of from a call center:
http://www.worldwideworkathome.com/articles/reservation-agents.html
That the Antiplanner would suggest that “transportation planners should do everything they can to make sure peak travel doesn’t happen anytime soon” strikes me as an oxymoron. Planners shouldn’t try to do anything regarding peak travel as their efforts will either miss the underlying cause, be wasteful, and/or yield unanticipated negative results.
The Stanford study’s six industrialized nations all have aging populations, i.e., the median age is increasing steadily. Intuitively, changing population demographics strike me as the most significant factor affecting long-term peak travel data. Perhaps the Antiplanner (who travels A LOT) doesn’t appreciate how aging affects the average person’s travel. When the kids move out, the minivan is sold and soccer mom can halve her daily trips. With retirement, no more commuting to work.
Just as the Baby Boomers’ demand for mobility in the 1950s and 60s sparked a surge in travel, their aging will slow the averages down, too.
PS: I’ll bet travel hasn’t peaked in China and India!