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Interstates Add Billions to Economy

By | | Transportation
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According to Wikipedia, constructing the Interstate Highway System cost $535 billion in 2020 dollars. Now, three economists from the University of Colorado and Florida State University have calculated the amount of benefits the highway add to our economy.

Interstate highways carry a quarter of all vehicle travel and probably more than a quarter of all heavy truck travel. Photo by Rupert Ganzer.

Their answer was $601.6 billion. Per year. In 2012 dollars, meaning $760 billion in today’s dollars using the GDP deflator. And that’s for freight only; the value of passenger travel is probably at least equal to that. Continue reading →

June 2022 Driving Up 0.9% from June 2019

By | | Transportation
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Despite record fuel prices, Americans drove almost 1 percent more miles in June 2022 than they did in June 2019, according to data released on Saturday by the Federal Highway Administration. Driving declined on urban interstate freeways, but it increased on other urban roads as well as all types of rural roads.

See the previous post for sources of Amtrak data and the post before that for sources of data for transit and air travel.

The nationwide average price of regular gasoline climbed from $4.58 a gallon on June 1 to a record $5.02 on June 14. Supposed experts claimed that prices would “stay high for a long time,” but instead they have fallen every day since the 14th, reaching $4.80 at the end of June and $3.90 as of yesterday.

On a miles-per-day basis, Americans drove 1.1 more miles in June than in May and 5.1 percent more in June than in April, when gas prices were 60 to 80 cents a gallon less than in June. This suggests that people are less deterred by high fuel prices than auto opponents would hope.

As noted a few days ago, transit ridership made a leap in June, with average daily ridership being 4.5 percent greater than in May. But since Americans travel almost 100 times as many passenger-miles per year by automobile as by urban transit, a large increase in transit ridership translates to a small decline in driving. That increase in transit ridership may have compensated for the decline in urban interstate driving, but lower fuel prices in July and August will probably lead to an increase in urban driving and a compensatory drop in transit travel.

When compared with June 2019, driving grew the most in Indiana (18%), Florida (16.5%), Connecticut (12.9%), Georgia (11.6%), Louisiana and Texas (each 11.7%). It fell the most short of 2019 miles in the District of Columbia (-19.2%), Delaware (-16.1%), Montana (-11.5%), Oregon (-8.7%), and Washington (-8.5%).

The Automobile Won

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Last month, anti-automobile activists led by the Congress for the New Urbanism announced the formation of a national Freeway Fighters Network. The network opposes new freeways and freeway expansions and wants to shift freeway money to other forms of transportation. Among other things, they object to new freeway capacity because it induces more highway travel.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

I have a message for these anti-auto activists: The war on the automobile is over. The automobile won. More accurately, auto drivers and users won. It is time for those engaged in this war to stop wasting their time, and everyone else’s, and start doing something productive. People concerned about the impacts of the automobile should give up trying to reduce driving, which has never worked, and instead encourage new automobiles and highways that are safer, cleaner, and more energy efficient.

Continue reading →

February Driving 97.1% of Pre-Pandemic Miles

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove almost 236 billion miles in February 2022, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. This was 97.1 percent as many miles as they drove in February 2020, the last month before the pandemic began to affect travel. February 2020 had one more day than February 2022, so if they both had the same number of days, February 2022 probably would have seen more miles driven than in February 2020.

Driving remains well ahead of other modes of travel while transit is furthest behind in its recovery from the pandemic.

The published numbers indicate that February driving in Delaware almost doubled from February 2020 levels, which may be due to an entry error. Otherwise, the largest increases in driving were in Louisiana (18%), Rhode Island (17%), Kentucky (16%), Arkansas, Hawaii, and South Carolina (all 13%), Florida and Indiana (both 12%), and Connecticut (11%). The largest decreases, relative to February 2020, were in Washington state (-21%), Kansas and North Dakota (both -18%), Minnesota (-17%), and Illinois (-12%).

January Driving 7.8% below Pre-Pandemic Miles

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove more than 240 billion vehicle-miles in January 2022, according to preliminary data released yesterday by the Federal Highway Administration. This was a 7.8 percent decrease from the nearly 261 billion vehicle-miles driving in January 2020. This was the first month in half a year that driving was less than the same month before the pandemic.

Driving thus follows the same pattern as other modes of travel, declining in January after several months of increases relative to before the pandemic. When compared with December, miles of driving fell by 10.4 percent, compared with 21.9 percent for air travel, 14.0 percent for transit, and 37.8 percent for Amtrak. These declines must have been due to concerns about the omicron variant of the coronavirus. Continue reading →

A New Take on Induced Demand

By | | Transportation
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Induced demand is not a phenomena to be feared but one to be welcomed, according to a recent Reason Foundation report by Steven Polzin. Demand for travel is always growing, and if new roads reduce the cost of travel, they will be used. Highway opponents say that’s why we shouldn’t build new roads, but Polzin points out there are many economic benefits from new road capacity and even from the demand “induced” by that new capacity.

Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this 35-page report.

New road capacity, Polzin says, allows people who either weren’t traveling at all due to congestion or who were traveling at inconvenient times or routes to avoid congestion to travel at preferred times and routes. This makes it appear that new capacity has “induced” demand but all it has really done is released demand suppressed by congestion. To the extent that new capacity leads to new travel, says Polzin, that generates economic activity that is good for the region. Continue reading →

Traffic Fatalities Up 18% from 2019

By | | Transportation
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says there were 31,720 traffic fatalities during the first nine months of 2021, which was 12 percent more than in the same months in 2020 and 18 percent more than 2019. The biggest increases in fatalities were in Idaho (36%), Nevada (30%), Oregon (29%), and Minnesota (26%). Fatalities declined in Nebraska (-18%), Maine (-14%), Maryland (-13%), Rhode Island (-8%), Wyoming (-6%), and six other states.

Blame the increase in traffic fatalities on Generation Y and Zers who are more likely to engage in risky behavior. Photo by Frans Van Heerden.

NHTSA doesn’t speculate on why fatalities have increased by such a large amount. However, a report from the American Automobile Association provides one answer: people who are more likely to take the risk of traveling during a pandemic are also more likely to engage in risky behavior while driving. Continue reading →

State & Local Highway Subsidies in 2019 and 2020

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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Americans drove 14 percent fewer miles in 2020 than in 2019, but state and local highway agencies continued to spend as much money on road improvements and maintenance. State and local highway subsidies increased only slightly, however, as the decline in miles of driving was partly offset by increases in fuel taxes and other user fees.

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Two years ago, an Antiplanner policy brief looked at 2018 state and local highway subsidies. Today’s update compares 2020 data with 2019 results based on data published in the Federal Highway Administration’s annual Highway Statistics reports. In these reports, highway user fees, and how much of them are actually spent on highways as opposed to mass transit or other programs, are shown in tables SDF for the states and LDF for local governments. The sources of highway funds, including user fees, general funds, and other taxes, are shown in tables SF-3 and LGF-1. The actual amounts of money spent on roads are shown in SF-2 and LGF-2. Continue reading →

December Driving 2.7% Above 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 2.7 percent more miles in December 2021 than in December 2019, according to the latest traffic volume data published by the Federal Highway Administration last Friday. According to these data, December was the seventh month in a row that driving exceeded driving in the same month in 2019.

This is a revision from previous reports because the Federal Highway Administration revised the national miles-traveled for December 2019 (shown on page 2 of the report). The preliminary estimate in 2019 was that Americans drove 273.8 billion vehicle miles in December. In 2020, this was revised downwards to 272.2 billion. But this report, for 2021, revised the December 2019 miles downwards even more to 261.8 billion. Continue reading →

Detroit to Blow $1.9 Million on Electric Road

By | | Transportation
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Detroit is installing charging coils under one mile of of one lane of a street in the city so people with electric cars can charge them as they drive. This is a crazy idea that I suspect has no future.

To start with, the city is spending $1.9 million to install the charging coils. As the above video notes, installing them throughout the city would cost billions. Continue reading →