Extraordinary Observations

A hot new report from Brookings confirms what most of the blogosphere has been anecdotally pointing out recently:

Like never before, Americans’ travel habits have a special place in our national conversation. The combination of gas price fluctuations, economic stress, energy concerns, and public financing woes have transformed transportation issues from inside baseball to front page news and water cooler conversation. A primary cause for this attention has been the major shifts in travel patterns. Americans have simply been driving less, when considering both historic growth rates and the most recent annualized measures of vehicle miles traveled (VMT). At the same time driving has declined, transit use is at its highest level since the 1950s, and Amtrak ridership just set an annual ridership record in 2008.

Robert Puentes, the report's primary author, goes on to make several recommendations, most of which urbanists have been pushing for years: increasing both the federal and local gasoline tax, creating sustainable neighborhoods, putting a moratorium on new highway lane miles, and looking deeply into how transit can impact our cities and metro areas. See a 5-minute discussion of the paper below:



It's fortunate that we have an administration coming into office that at least seems willing to acknowledge these changing patterns. Mankiw points out that our new energy secretary has been a supporter of new gasoline taxes; Joe Biden is one of the most pro-rail politicians in government; if Obama can stick to his promises of change, then hopefully we can start looking forward, rather than backward, when it comes to transportation policy in America.