Trucks, cars and buses accounted for 3.2 trillion miles driven in the country last year, according to an estimate released by the Federal Highway Administration on Feb. 21.
According to the agency’s “Traffic Volume Trends” report for December 2016, this fifth straight year of increased mileage on public roads highlights a need to increase investments for surface transportation projects. For 2015, FHWA estimated 3.1 trillion miles were driven.
The 13-state region from Montana to California (including Hawaii and Alaska) had the largest increase — 2.9% — in an assessment of vehicle miles traveled. That marked a continuation of an uninterrupted series of increases per month that began in October 2013.
Louisiana saw the highest unadjusted single-state traffic percent increase at 5.8%, when compared with the same month last year, followed by Utah (5.2%) and Nevada (5.1%). North Dakota led the country with the largest unadjusted, or estimated, traffic decrease, at 6.2%, compared with the same month in the previous year.
California, at 33.9 billion, had more miles driven in December 2016 than 22 states combined (33.8 billion miles): Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s infrastructure a near-failing grade in 2013. The engineers say an investment of about $3.6 trillion by 2020 is needed to bring the country’s infrastructure to a state of good repair. ASCE will unveil its new infrastructure report card March 9.
