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States Shouldn’t Try to Reduce Per-Capita Driving

By | | Transportation
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The most idiotic ideas come from articles written by anti-car writers. This isn’t recent, but a colleague from Washington let me know of a 2022 article from a “public interest” organization called the Frontier Group that reports that “less driving is possible.” Thanks to “compact neighborhoods” and “investments in infrastructure that supports walking, biking or riding transit,” some states have managed to reduce per-capita driving, which the Frontier Group regards as a victory.

To encourage transit while discouraging driving, Washington converted lanes on a bridge that had previously been open to all vehicles into light-rail lines. Image by Sound Transit.

As evidence, the author of the Frontier Group article, Elizabeth Redlington, compared miles of per capita driving by state in 1996 and 2021. Between those two years, some states increased but some declined and the biggest decline was in Washington state, which saw a 15.8 percent drop in per capita driving during that period. Continue reading →

Transport and Economic Opportunity: 2020

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The nation’s fifty largest urban areas housed 82.5 million jobs in 2020, and auto drivers could reach 98 percent of them in an hour of travel. Transit riders, by comparison, could reach only 8 percent in an hour while bicycle riders could reach 7 percent, according to the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory.

The average resident of one of the nation’s fifty largest urban areas can reach 600,000 jobs in a 30-minute auto trip but only 85,000 jobs in a 50-minute transit trip and 92,000 jobs in a 50-minute bike ride.

I’ve previously cited the observatory’s 2019 data many times, but when writing yesterday’s post about travel speeds and productivity, I noticed that it has recently updated the data to 2020. The introduction says the data were collected before the pandemic so “the 2020 results may provide a useful baseline for evaluating the impact that COVID-19 had on access across America.” Continue reading →

New Orleans Dismantles Bike Lanes

By | | Transportation
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In 2020, New Orleans planned to install bike lanes on 75 miles of streets, reducing the capacity of those streets to move cars. The residents of the first neighborhoods where they were installed strongly protested and are happy to report that, in late July and early August, all newly installed bike lanes have been or are being removed. Concrete barriers that once separated bicycles from autos have been ground away and stripes separating bicycles from autos have been replaced by signs reminding auto drivers to share the roads with bicycles.

Although strongly supported by many bicycle advocacy groups, bicycle lanes have questionable benefits for bicycle riders. The lanes are designed to safeguard bicycle riders from being hit from behind by automobiles, but this kind of accident is rare. Instead, most bicycle-auto collisions take place at intersections, and bicycle lanes usually disappear at the intersections. By creating an illusion of safety, bicycle lanes may increase cycling on busy streets and effectively put more bicycle riders in harms way by encouraging them to cross intersections where they are more likely to get hit. Continue reading →

June Driving 0.75% Greater Than in 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove slightly more miles in June 2023 than they did in June 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. Highway driving first reached 100 percent of pre-pandemic levels in June of 2021 and has been hovering around 100 percent ever since. In comparison, flying didn’t reach 100 percent until January of this year, while Amtrak has been hovering around 90 percent since August 2022 and transit has never exceeded 72 percent.

For a detailed discussion of Amtrak results, see last Tuesday’s post. For a detailed discussion of transit and airline results, see last Saturday’s post.

Urban driving was only 99.0 percent of pre-pandemic levels, but rural driving more than made up for it at 105.3 percent. Total miles of driving exceeded 2019 numbers in 27 states, with the biggest gains in Idaho (117%), Missouri (114%), Alaska (114%), Colorado (113%), Wyoming (112%), and Michigan (111%). Driving is still only 76 percent of pre-COVID levels in the District of Columbia and is also woefully short in Illinois (84%), Massachusetts (91%), Maryland (92%), California (93%), Hawaii (94%), Washington (94%), and Georgia (94%). Driving in all other states was at least 95 percent of 2019 miles. Continue reading →

Three Questions about EVs

By | | Transportation
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Judging from the headlines, the electric vehicle market is booming. Tesla is now the second-highest selling auto in California. General Motors, Ford, VW, and other companies claim to have set targets to largely transition from petroleum-powered vehicles in a few years. Each week, it seems, new models are being introduced, including everything from subcompacts to giant SUVs and pickups.

Will electric vehicles free us or tie us down?

Still, the closer I look the more questions I have. In particular, are auto manufacturers (other than Tesla) really serious about making EVs? Will electric vehicles ever be more than a niche product? And are they really a cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Continue reading →

April Miles of Driving 91% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 91 percent as many miles in April 2023 as they did in the same month in 2019, according to data released by the Federal Highway Administration yesterday. Relative to before the pandemic, driving hasn’t been this low since August 2020.

See last Wednesday’s post for a discussion of transit and air travel and last Thursday’s post for a discussion of Amtrak travel.

As I pointed out last week, April 2023 had two fewer business days than April 2019. But the number of business days seems to have less of an effect on driving than on transit. After all, commuters make up at least 40 percent of transit ridership but less than 20 percent of vehicles on the road. Driving in February, which has the same number of business days each year, was 104 percent of 2019 while driving in March, which had two more business days than in 2019, was 100 percent of 2019. Continue reading →

Another Day, Another Anti-Auto Screed

By | | Transportation
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“Parking ruined everything,” says self-described urbanist blowhard Dante Ramos in The Atlantic. Apparently, parking is the reason why housing is so expensive, your favorite architectural styles are no longer being built, and why your favorite delicatessen was torn down last year.

All of that is hogwash, of course, but since Ramos is singing to the choir, he doesn’t even try to prove any of these assertions. Instead, the article is filled with ridiculous comparisons, such as, “In a typical year, the country builds more three-car garages than one-bedroom apartments.” Yes, that’s because the demand for family homes is a lot higher than the demand for one-bedroom apartments. Continue reading →

March Driving 99.9% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 99.9 percent as many miles in March 2023 as in the same month in 2019, according to data released by the Federal Highway Administration on Friday. Rural driving was 4.1 percent greater than in 2019, and driving on urban interstates was 1.5 percent greater, but other urban driving was 3.1 percent less than in 2019, dragging down the overall average.

See May 5 post for discussion of transit, Amtrak, and airline travel.

I have to say I’m a little bit skeptical of these numbers. Throughout the pandemic, rural driving has been a bit ahead of urban, so that makes sense. However, urban interstate driving was generally behind other urban driving. Why is it suddenly ahead now? Continue reading →

2022 Driving Was 97.2% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 94.2 percent as many miles in December, 2022 as they did in the same month before the pandemic, according to data released by the Federal Highway Administration yesterday. Total driving for the year was 97.2 percent of 2019.

Both urban and rural driving fell short of pre-pandemic levels in December. Americans drove about 99 percent as many miles in rural areas but only 92 percent as many miles in urban areas as in 2019. Continue reading →

Next Up: Gas Rationing

By | | Transportation
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Monday’s Antiplanner noted that Oxford England has set a goal of reducing driving by 25 percent and observed that, “No city in the developed world has been able to reduce driving by this much since World War II.” I didn’t want to give anyone any ideas, so I didn’t add that driving fell during World War II due to gas rationing.

A rationing coupon issued to a resident of Lowell, Oregon, who owned a 1934 Plymouth.

Too late: when I wrote that, I wasn’t aware that, just the day before, a journal called Ethics, Policy and the Environment had published an article arguing in favor of gas rationing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The authors claim that this would be a “fairer way to fight climate change.” Continue reading →