More Shifts in the Year of the Plague: Driving Plunged even as Mass Transit Ridership Collapsed

[marmar]

More Shifts in the Year of the Plague: Driving Plunged even as Mass Transit Ridership Collapsed
by Wolf Richter • Feb 25, 2021 •

“L-shaped recovery” for mass transit. Per person, vehicle miles were already in long-term decline since 2003. Than came 2020.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.


Total motor vehicle travel on all roads and streets in the US – by private and commercial vehicles, including delivery vehicles, over-the-road trucks and rideshare vehicles – dropped by 13.2%, or by 430 billion vehicle miles driven, in the year 2020, by far the largest drop in the data going back to the 1990s, according to the Federal Highway Administration today:



The enormous shifts of the Pandemic.

This plunge was caused by the shift to working from home and learning from home, and by the acceleration of shopping online instead of driving to the mall, and by the massive unemployment crisis that further reduced commuting, and by the restrictions to socializing and driving to restaurants and bars and concerts and ballgames.

Total motor vehicle travel on all roads and streets in December 2020 fell by 10.3% from December 2019, which brought the total for the year to 2,830 billion vehicle miles driven, the lowest since 2001.

And the drop in 2020 makes the declines during the Great Recession, which had caused so much hand-wringing at the time, look minuscule. From the peak at the time in 2007 through the trough in 2011, over these four years, total miles driven dropped by only 2.6%. .................(more)

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/02/25/vehicle-miles-driven-2020-pandemic-plunge-mass-transit-abandoned/

[progree]

1. Fortunately the drop in transit ridership in the Twin Cities is a less drastic 50%

Well worth reading the entire article, there are some more interesting graphs, including total miles driven by year, and miles driven per person of driving age -- which peaked in 2003 at about 13,300 miles and has since fallen to 12,500 in 2019 and 10,900 in 2020 - from a quick read of the graph).

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I've been retired for about seven years

(oh, dear lord, I can't believe it's been that long) and I used to make at least three or four long driving trips each year. The last time I did so was in October of 2019. I do keep on getting money back from my car insurance, which is nice.