2015 On Pace to Be Most Heavily Traveled Year, New Federal Data Show |
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Federal Highway Administration
22 January 2016
FHWA 05-16
Friday, January 22, 2016
Contact: Doug Hecox
202-366-0660
U.S. Driving in November 2015 Continues Record Setting Year
WASHINGTON – New data released today by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) show that U.S. driving reached 2.88 trillion miles by the end of November, making it likely that U.S. drivers will make 2015 the most heavily traveled year in history.
The new data, published in FHWA’s latest “Traffic Volume Trends” report – a monthly estimate of U.S. road travel – show that more than 253 billion miles were driven in November alone, reaffirming the growing demands challenging the nation’s roads and underscoring the value of the recently enacted “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation” (FAST) Act, which will invest $305 billion in America’s surface transportation infrastructure – including $226 billion for roads and bridges – over the next five years.
The November 2015 report also includes seasonally-adjusted data, which is conducted by USDOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics as a way to even out seasonal variation in travel and enable vehicle miles travelled (VMT) comparisons with any other month in any year.
The seasonally-adjusted vehicle miles traveled for November 2015 were 264 billion miles, a 3.4 percent increase in VMT – compared to the previous November but a slight (.1 percent) increase compared with seasonally adjusted October 2015 figures. The estimates include passenger vehicle, bus and truck travel.
In November, U.S. drivers increased total mileage among all five regions of the United States. Traffic in the West – a 13-state region including Alaska and Hawaii – led the nation with 59 billion unadjusted VMT. With only 35.2 billion unadjusted VMT, the Northeast – a nine-state area stretching from Pennsylvania to Maine – had the least.
At 8.9 percent, Hawaii led the nation with the largest unadjusted single-state traffic percent increase compared to the same month a year earlier, followed by Idaho at 7.7 percent and Florida at 7 percent. At 3.9 percent, Washington, D.C., had the largest unadjusted traffic decrease for the month.
The new figures confirm the trends identified in “Beyond Traffic,” a USDOT report issued last year, which projects a 43 percent increase in commercial truck shipments and population growth of 70 million by 2045. The report examines the trends and choices facing America’s transportation infrastructure over the next three decades, including a rapidly growing population, increasing freight volume, demographic shifts in rural and urban areas, and a transportation system that is facing more frequent extreme weather events. Increased gridlock nationwide can be expected unless changes are made in the near-term.
To review the VMT data in FHWA's "Traffic Volume Trends" reports, which are based on information collected from more than 5,000 continuous count stations nationwide, visit https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm.