via infrastructurist
Americans drove a lot in 2010. Roughly 3 trillion miles, to be more precise. The third-highest total mileage figure in history, to be more precise still.
But while vehicles in general continue to rack up mileage, some road researchers have noticed that driving in major cities has reached an unexpected plateau — a phenomenon known as “peak car use.” The Brookings Institution discovered this trend a few years back, Adam Millard-Ball and Lee Schipper confirmed it earlier this year, and just last month a pair of Australian scholars reported that peak car use appears to be a global trend that’s here to stay.
In the June issue (pdf) of the journal World Transport, Policy & Practice, Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy of the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute, in Perth, report that per capita vehicle kilometers traveled in several major cities around the world actually declined from 1995 to 2005. In Europe, London dropped 1.2 percent, Stockholm 3.7, and Vienna 7.6. In the United States, Atlanta fell 10.1 percent and Houston 15.2; even Los Angeles fell 2 percent. The chart above shows a clear slowing of growth in car use in recent times.
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