US driving data fuels calls for highway investment

New estimates released by the US Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) show that American driving between July 2013 and June 2014 is at levels not seen since 2008, fuelling calls for greater investment in highways that must bear growing volumes of traffic.
September 1, 2014 Read time: 2 mins

New estimates released by the US Department of Transportation's 831 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) show that American driving between July 2013 and June 2014 is at levels not seen since 2008, fuelling calls for greater investment in highways that must bear growing volumes of traffic.

"More people driving means our economy is picking up speed," said US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. "It also means we need to increase our investment in transportation to meet this demand, which is why Congress needs to pass the President's four-year, uS$302 billion Grow America Act."

According to FHWA's Traffic Volume Trends report – a monthly estimate of American travel – drivers in June 2014 logged 261.7 billion vehicle-miles travelled (VMT), the highest level for any June since 2010 and the biggest single-month gain this year. It is the nation's fourth consecutive month of VMT growth.

Americans drove more than 2.97 trillion miles between July 2013 and June 2014, the most recent month for which data are available. In the first half of 2014, drivers travelled 1.466 trillion miles – the largest since 2010 and the fourth-highest in the report's 78-year-history.

"These data are critical to helping the nation's leaders make informed decisions about critical infrastructure investments," said Acting Federal Highway Administrator Gregory Nadeau. "To ensure our roads, bridges and tunnels can keep pace with the demands of the American public, greater investment is needed – and the Grow America Act is a step in the right direction."

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Vendor's eye view of US economic stimulus programme
    March 12, 2012
    Pete Goldin explores the impact of the US economic stimulus programme on the ITS industry from the ITS vendor perspective
    Read More
  • CBO report on federal highway spending ‘a breath of fresh air’ says IBTTA
    February 17, 2016
    The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) applauds a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, Approaches to Making Federal Highway Spending More Productive, which examines the economic advantages of tolling as one means of funding the nation’s highway system.
    Read More
  • Brake, IAM concerned at government figures on UK drink-drive habit
    August 7, 2015
    Brake, the road safety charity, and the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), have responded to the latest government figures which they say show Britain is still failing to adequately tackle its drink drive problem. A final estimate shows 240 people were killed by drivers over the legal drink drive limit in 2013, while provisional estimates suggest at least that number were killed in 2014. However, the number of people seriously injured in drink drive crashes did fall by eight per cent to 1,100 from 20
    Read More
  • Freight poses growing problem for city authorities
    March 3, 2017
    Wes Guckert considers possible solutions and countermeasures to the problems of increased freight deliveries in growing cities. In January 2016, the US Department of Transportation (USDoT) conducted a session on the SmartCity Challenge and Urban Freight and Logistics. This session was a follow-up to the USDoT report titled, Beyond Traffic 2045.
    Read More

Highlighted Content