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State and National VMT Estimates: It Ain't Necessarily So

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  • Lave, Charles

Abstract

The enormous jump in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reported by the 1990 U.S. Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) caused a great deal of concern among planners and policy analysts. Such a jump seemed to portend an era of ever increasing travel, pollution and energy consumption. This paper re-analyses the NPTS data and shows that the VMT jump was a statistical error. The 1990 NPTS oversampled new vehicles and undersampled old ones. Since new vehicles are driven two to three times as much as old one, the sampling bias will overestimate VMT. And the result may have been intensified by an underestimate of VMT in the 1983 NPTS, thus increasing the apparent jump form 1983 to 1990. I also calculate alternative VMT estimates using data from two other national surveys and a massive odometer-based California study. The three new estimates are in close agreement with each other. I conclude that VMT per vehicle actually grew at only half the rate estimated by the NPTS.

Suggested Citation

  • Lave, Charles, 1994. "State and National VMT Estimates: It Ain't Necessarily So," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt5527j8dj, University of California Transportation Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt5527j8dj
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    Cited by:

    1. Brownstone, David & Fang, Hao (Audrey), 2014. "A vehicle ownership and utilization choice model with endogenous residential density," The Journal of Transport and Land Use, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, vol. 7(2), pages 135-151.
    2. Walls, Margaret & Hanson, Jean, 1996. "Distributional Impacts of an Environmental Tax Shift: The Case of Motor Vehicle Emissions Taxes," RFF Working Paper Series dp-96-11, Resources for the Future.

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    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences;

    Statistics

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