New data released today by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (U.S. DOT) Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) show that U.S. driving topped 1.58 trillion miles in the first six months of 2017, continuing a streak of steadily increasing vehicle miles travelled (VMT) that began in 2011.
The new data, published in FHWA’s latest “Traffic Volume Trends” report—a monthly estimate of U.S. road travel—show that more than 280.9 billion miles were driven in June 2017 alone, which is 3.4 billion miles more than the previous June.
The June 2017 report also includes seasonally-adjusted data, which is conducted by U.S. DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics as a way to even out seasonal variation in travel and enable VMT comparisons with any other month in any year. The seasonally adjusted VMT for June 2017 were 266.6 billion miles, a 1% increase compared to the previous June. The estimates include passenger vehicle, bus and truck travel.
In June, U.S. drivers increased total mileage among all five regions of the United States. At 2.2%, traffic in the West—a 13-state region stretching from California to Montana, and including Hawaii and Alaska—led the nation with largest percentage increase in unadjusted VMT. At .5%, the North Central region—a 12-state area stretching from North Dakota to Ohio—had the smallest percentage increase in unadjusted VMT for the month.
At 3.5%, Oklahoma led the nation with the largest unadjusted single-state traffic percent increase compared to the same month a year earlier, followed by Nevada and Kansas at 3.4% and 3.3% respectively. At 2.3%, Michigan had the nation’s largest unadjusted traffic decrease for the month.
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Source: FHWA
