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WASHINGTON — Good news for truckers.
The government says there are fewer Americans on the road
than a year ago.
As summer vacation season kicked in, Americans got out of
their cars, driving 12.2 billion fewer miles in June than the
same month a year earlier.
The 4.7 percent decline, which came while fuel prices were
peaking, was the biggest monthly driving drop in a downward
trend that began in November, the Federal Highway
Administration said Wednesday.
“Clearly, more Americans chose to stay close to home in
June than in previous years,” said Transportation Secretary
Mary Peters.
Overall, Americans drove 53.2 billion fewer miles November
through June than they did over the same eight-month period
a year earlier, according to the highway agency's latest
monthly report on driving.
That's a larger decline than the 49.3 billion fewer miles driven
by Americans over the entire decade of the 1970s, a period
marked by oil embargoes and gas lines, the agency said.
Travel Industry Association spokeswoman Cathy Keefe said
the June driving decline “is not surprising, given the
environment that we were in.”
But she believes that the recent drop in gas prices to below
$4 a gallon in many parts of the country will have travelers
on the road again.
“I think people have started to take the increase in gas prices
somewhat more in stride,” Keefe said. The trade association
is predicting only a 1.2 percent decline in all forms of
business and leisure travel this year.
The June driving data, collected by more than 4,000
automatic traffic recorders operated round-the-clock by state
highway agencies, were supported by a telephone survey by
AARP of people age 50 and over in which 67 percent said
they have cut back on their driving because of high gas prices.
Four in 10 said they have used public transportation, walked
or ridden a bicycle more frequently since gas prices have
risen, according to the AARP poll, which was being released
in mid August.
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AARP, which shortened its name from the American
Association of Retired Persons, polled 1,006 people nationally
between July 9 and July 15. The poll has margin of error of
plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Gas consumption was down, too. The highway administration
said motorists consumed 400 million fewer gallons of gasoline
and 318 million fewer gallons of diesel in the first quarter of
2008 than in the same period in 2007.
Peters said the decline in driving will mean less money for
highway repairs and construction projects needed to relieve
traffic congestion.
“We can’t afford to continue pinning our transportation
network’s future to the gas tax,” said Peters. “It really makes
little sense to try to upgrade our infrastructure using a revenue
source as ineffective, unsustainable and unpopular as the fuel
tax.”
The Highway Trust Fund, which underwrites the projects, is
funded by the federal 18.4 cents a gallon tax on gasoline and
24.4 cents a gallon tax on diesel.
The driving drop was not all bad, however.
“There is at least one silver lining in what's otherwise fairly
painful news and that is that less driving means less air
pollution and fewer global warming emissions,” said Frank
O'Donnell of the environmental group Clean Air Watch.
Emissions from cars and trucks, along with power plants, are
the top sources of air pollution, he said.
The Federal Highway Administration collects vehicle-miles-
traveled data for all motor vehicles through more than 4,000
automatic traffic recorders operated round-the-clock by state
highway agencies. To review the FHWA’s “Traffic Volume
Trends” reports, including that of June 2008, click here.
(source: The Trucker .com)
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