urbanMSP

Yeah in January 08 it peaked at 305,000 miles driven for 304 million people. The last point on the chart has 310,000 miles driven for 320 million people. So VMT per capita is still below Jan 08. But is up 3% from January 2014.

The graph is taking every july into account and it looks like the only reason why only the latest july is shown is because its the end point of the data. The graph is very misleading in starting at 285K and making the 10k rise look like an insane spike though.

Very similar charts were used to exclaim loudly that we had reached Peak Car during the recession and its aftermath. Curiously, I don't recall such nitpicking then.

A sober reading of this would seem to suggest that, smoothing out for the impacts of the recession and the recent crash in oil prices, the trendline has changed but has not gone negative.

Grant points out that the effects of all of this will be felt unevenly. No doubt, this is true. In an area like Minneapolis proper, we'll see the increasing attractiveness of non-auto transport being counteracted by the fact that we're striving to increase our population by 25%.

I ditched my car when I moved here