Young People Driving Less- 23% Less!
A new report out from the Frontier Group says Americans are driving less than just a few years ago- especially younger people. The average annual number of vehicle-miles traveled by you16 to 34-year-olds decreased by 23 percent between 2001 and 2009!
Why is this age group driving less?
The Frontier Group has some reasons.
About SRTC
SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.
SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.
4 comments:
Very interesting, and that will make planning new highways a lot more interesting, more bike paths? Sidewalks?
I do think high gas prices have a lot to do with less miles, but everything in owing a car is expensive now and the backyard mechanic is nearly gone with so much computer controls hard for a broke teen ager to own a car.
Add insurance to that equation and I have no clue how even young adults, let alone teenagers, can afford to drive. I have a couple friends with kids at or above driving age and, as long as a few of their friends have licenses, they're not even interested in getting one.
I have two kids (OK, one is an adult now...) who are driving. The oldest was excited to get her license, but now takes the bus a majority of the time in order to stay fit and save gas money... She's seeing cars as the money pit they are. The other, my son, is 16. He is only in driver's ed, because my husband insists on it. He could care less about driving and sees no real need to drive when there are buses and bikes to ride.
Here is a research piece on the how the younger generation has lost interest in automobiles: http://www.uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Transportation%20%26%20the%20New%20Generation%20vUS_0.pdf
Someone else also sent me this study so I've been in the process of looking at it since last week. Very interesting... now we just need to work on the infrastructure to keep those young people using transit, biking and walking.
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