There is some interesting data presented in “The State of Transportation in Hampton Roads,” published by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. I doubt that the author, Dwight L. Farmer, draws the same conclusions from the data as I do — the PDF file I extract these charts from doesn’t contain any commentary — but that’s the beauty of raw data. It can be interpreted in many ways.
Let’s start with a chart that shows how the total number of Vehicle Miles Driven between 1996 and 2005 in Hampton Roads has outpaced the growth in population and the number of licensed drivers.
What could account for such a dramatic increase? Well, let’s look at people’s commuting habits.
This chart shows a continuation in recent years of a long-term trend of people driving to work in locations outside the localities where they live. Translation: Instead of living in compact urban areas with a balance of housing and jobs, an increasing percentage of Hampton Roads residents have been living in bedroom communities and driving longer distances to job centers closer to the urban core.
Why are Hampton Roads residents living in bedroom communities? Because they enjoy driving longer distances? Of course not. They’re living in bedroom communities because that’s where the bulk of new housing is being built.
There’s one more factor at work: More Hampton Roadsters are driving solo, while a smaller percentage are walking, biking, carpooling, riding buses or –and this surprises me — working at home.
There are two reasons for the increasing number of solo drivers. The first is prosperity: More households can afford to buy and maintain cars for every licensed driver in the family. Prosperity is a good thing. The other reason, however, is not. New development is increasingly scattered, disconnected and low-density, which effectively precludes walking, biking and mass transit as transportation options. In other words, people are forced to drive automobiles because the prevailing pattern of land use reduces their transportation options.
There is one sliver of potentially good news. The rate of increase in VMT has slowed since 1999 and plateaued for the most recent two years measured. Given the increase in gasoline prices in 2005 and 2006, it’s possible that VMT might have actually declined in 2006.
Are there forces at work that could be reversing the remorseless increase in VMT? Are human settlement patterns changing in Hampton Roads in ways that we don’t fully appreciate? Are jobs migrating away from the urban core along with housing? Does the aging of the population and increasing number of retirees mean that a growing percentage of the population actually is driving less?
More to the point, if VMT is leveling off, is the transportation “crisis” in Hampton Roads being overblown? Stay tuned. We’ll have to see what story the 2006 data tell us.
(Hat tip to Reid Greenbaum for bringing this document to my attention.)
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