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Has the Industrialized World Reached Peak Travel?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-blame-the-lack-of-flying-cars dept.

Harperdog sends this excerpt from Miller-McCune: "A study (abstract) of eight industrialized countries, including the United States, shows that seemingly inexorable trends — ever more people, more cars and more driving — came to a halt in the early years of the 21st century, well before the recent escalation in fuel prices. It could be a sign, researchers said, that the demand for travel and the demand for car ownership in those countries has reached a saturation point. 'With talk of "peak oil," why not the possibility of "peak travel" when a clear plateau has been reached?' asked co-author Lee Schipper ... Most of the eight countries in the study have experienced declines in miles traveled by car per capita in recent years. The US appears to have peaked at an annual 8,100 miles by car per capita, and Japan is holding steady at 2,500 miles."

17 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Far from it... by RobertM1968 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We simply either cant spend the money, wont spend the money or cant/wont approve new infrastructure projects that will ease the traffic burden. One prime example was ripping down the West Side Highway in NYC (instead of fixing or replacing it), and then "wondering" why congestion increased when "suddenly" the drivers who used to use the WSH are now on surface streets or migrating to the FDR drive.

    --
    StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
    1. Re:Far from it... by cduffy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As population density increases in some region, it becomes harder (disproportionately more expensive) to increase the carrying capacity of roads in proportion

      This is true. However, a conclusion that sprawl is cheaper to maintain would be wildly inaccurate.

      I spent some time reviewing alternatives for the Austin Comprehensive Plan -- discussing zoning, city layout, pollution levels, cost to build and maintain roads, man-hours and funds wasted by commuting, and the like for several different development scenarios. The high-density, compact city was not only environmentally preferable -- it was by far the most economically efficient way to manage our anticipated growth.

      Increasing capacity of existing roads (while still keeping them focused around single-occupancy vehicles) is inordinately expensive, yes. On the other hand, planning a compact, high-density city that puts people in walking or cycling distance of their work, schools and shopping avoids creation of those vehicle-miles altogether -- and creates a more livable, healthier city to boot.

    2. Re:Far from it... by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Which will work fine until oil is at $120-150/barrel, and you're spending a non-negligible amount on fuel for commuting and can't afford your mortgage and food.

      There are billions of people between India and China who are going to be driving soon. And who will be using oil to do so. Don't kid yourself, the suburbs are unsustainable.

    3. Re:Far from it... by Scott+Wood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You claim to speak for all Americans and Europeans?

      I would much rather live in a proper city (they're not all slums) than a suburb or exurb. I hate being tied to a huge hulk of oil-gobbling pollution-spewing metal that I must take everywhere I go (and always be sober to do so), with so much land being dedicated to the storage of said hulks of metal at every destination (you say you don't like concrete -- do you like asphalt?). Unfortunately, the city I live in (Austin, but it applies in much of the US) has zoned mostly low density and thus high density areas are expensive due to limited supply relative to demand, and jobs are scattered in the suburbs, so I'm stuck with the car.

      If you like your exurb (but apparently not the one you work in, since you feel the need to commute), fine, but don't complain about gas tax increases or other driving charges to pay for your highways and to keep CO2 and oil consumption under control. Don't complain if you get charged higher utility rates than urban customers because you need more pipe/wire distance per person. Don't complain if more of your local taxes have to be spent on police and fire coverage to cover the same number of people. Don't complain if state/federal tax money is spent on the more efficient population centers, particularly for things like transit. Don't complain that natural gas/electricity has to be kept cheap so you can heat/cool your large detached house.

    4. Re:Far from it... by arkenian · · Score: 4, Interesting

      and a decent yard between us and noisy neighbors who don't share my sleep cycle. Much better to sit in traffic a bit than to live in some city center.

      I feel obliged to note here:

      while most apartments are cheap as hell and you don't notice this, it is perfectly possible to design apartment buildings so the noise factor (from neighbors) is not an issue. While I've lived in a lot of worse places since, when I lived in Boston, one of my neighbors was a professional violin player, who practiced a great deal, but his playing could only be heard in the hall, not from neighboring units. It was actually almost a problem.... the noise insulation was so good, that the FIRE ALARM went off in the hall, and I could barely hear it in my bedroom.

      Sadly, the noise insulation from the outside was not as good, but that was because it didn't have modern windows (which is an easy thing to do in a modern building)

      Don't get me wrong, I mostly agree with you. But I felt obliged to note that it IS possible to make an apartment building which gives its tenants privacy, even if only so that people would know to look for one if they're stuck in the city.

    5. Re:Far from it... by dr2chase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"?

      A non-trivial number of us must want to live in cities, else real estate there would be cheaper. If you look at census data for blobs-O-people (50K units, or larger), a minimum of 1/3 of the US population lives in density greater than or equal to 2000 people per square mile. (This is a minimum, because the 25,000 people living in my town, are not counted, nor are people living in nearby, dense, sub-50K towns.) 2000 per square mile is Lexington, MA, complete with office parks etc. It might not be that dense. It is, however, the density of Assen in the Netherlands, where they manage a bicycle trip share of 40% -- so it's clearly dense enough for many people to get out of their cars.

      Charts, pointers to data, here.

      You can also find other versions of this data at gapminder.org. Their claim is that we are less dense that quite a few countries (UK, Japan, France, Germany, South Korea) but that a higher fraction of our population is "urban" (82%, seems high, like to know how they define "urban").

    6. Re:Far from it... by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As I just posted to someone else,

      Manhattan is a case study of a city full of rich people. If you're not one of the rich people working in the fashion or finance industries, and instead have to work a working-class job like cleaning the toilets for one of the nice Manhattan offices, you're relegated to a slum in one of the other boroughs and have to commute in by train every day.

      It's not that hard to have a really nice, dense, and safe non-slum city when you move all the poorest people (who do all the shit jobs) out of the city and force them to commute.

    7. Re:Far from it... by pstorry · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nonsense. Oil already hit $120 a few years back, and I don't know anyone who had to chose between commuting and traveling. Even if it hits $200 per barrel 5 years from now, my car will be ready for replacement, and I can buy another one which uses half as much fuel.

      Just so I'm clear on this... Your solution to "Fuel is getting more expensive, at some point I may not be able to commute" will be "I need to buy a new car".

      Hmmm.

      I think I'm beginning to see why America has such a large deficit...

  2. Oh dear... by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is "peak" the new "-gate"?

  3. Travel time maxes out by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

    Few people spend more than 1 and 2 hours a day traveling, unless their work itself is moving themselves or stuff around. So as speeds max out, so does travel.

    Both car travel and air travel have slowed down. Even subsonic jets used to fly faster, but the fuel consumption goes up as Mach 1 is approached. Airport time is much longer than it used to be. Road capacity maxes out at 35MPH; faster, and the cars are spaced out more, so vehicles per minute drops. (California uses metering lights to try to keep freeways at 35MPH under heavy load. Japan just sets low speed limits on urban expressways.)

    And, of course, we have such good communications that going somewhere merely to talk to someone is rarely necessary.

  4. Sheesh, trends don't == natural law. by RyanFenton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Improved communications, including the Internet has helped make some forms of travel less necessary.

    2. Optimized analysis of usage patterns have allowed businesses to minimize travel costs better.

    3. A general drastic shift in income towards the more wealthy at the cost of growth in other income levels has minimized the ability for most folks to have the opportunity for leisure travel (time as much as money).

    Those create a trend - but there's no inherent "peak travel" there. Start electing folks who will tax wealth in order to give meaningful freedom to everyone else again (see: 1940's to 1970's US), and you will see more frequent travel again as people have resources to start businesses, engage in leisure activities, and do more than just go to WalMart every long once in a while, rather than a few rich having exponential increases.

    Ryan Fenton

    1. Re:Sheesh, trends don't == natural law. by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Disagree.

      People have more leisure time then they've ever had. When they were farmers they worked 6 days a week (minus sundays) and often from sunup to sundown. Now they work just 5 days a week and 8-10 hours a day. Hence they have free time to watch TV in the evenings, or to travel to the beach on the weekend, something our pre-1930s ancestors never dreamed of.

      If driving has hit a plateau since 2000, maybe it's because people simply don't want to. I know I have no desire to hop in my car and drive to the store, when I can just click netflix.com to watch a video, or shop amazon.com and have it delivered to me. I don't even visit the bank now - I just do it all on the internet from the comfort of my chair.

      If I didn't have to buy food, I'd probably never leave the house.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  5. Traffic Volume Trends by cliffiecee · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ever since the time that gasoline hit $4 here in the US, I've been keeping an eye on the DOT's Traffic Volume Trends. It seems to me that, once Americans realized how much gas could cost (and will permanently cost, eventually), they also realized how much auto travel is superfluous. In particular This chart of the 12-month average for all roads shows a clear pullback in miles driven. Perhaps some of this could be attributable to people being more efficient in their travel; taking care of multiple errands at once, using public transportation much more, etc. Certainly the downturn in the economy has an impact, too.

  6. Apples-Oranges by olsmeister · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They reference miles traveled by car per capita. The US population grows by 2.5M people every year, which would lead me to believe the total miles driven is still increasing.

    When I've seen peak oil discussed, usually they are talking about total oil output and not per capita consumption.

  7. Awaiting next revolution by eagl · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Peak travel is an interesting concept but it applies only to a given technology level. My own situation is an example. I live in Texas and have family on both the East and West coast of the US. I would also like to vacation in Florida, Maine, and Northern California. But with 2 small children and the TSA increasingly repressive, I simply don't travel much beyond a one-day driving distance.

    That would change instantly if fast, harassment-free transportation were available. That used to be the airlines, and it could be fast rail if it weren't for the fact that excessive govt regulation and problems getting right-of-way means that it will never happen. But we're one transportation revolution away from me making coast to coast travel plans fairly often, because that is where I would want to go if there were reasonable transportation options.

    I can't be the only one who doesn't go anywhere beyond a 1-day drive anymore, either. If we're at a transportation peak, it is because of artificial suppression of travel due to airport harassment and because of other concerns that could be addressed by the availability of fast and easy transportation. Note that I don't mention cost - I'd be willing to pay quite a bit for quick and hassle free transportation around the country, but it simply can't be done right now.

    As a nation, we're quickly heading towards loserville when we can't even manage to use available technology to let people travel freely without harassment. Car, train, and aircraft technology are all available to allow for reasonably rapid transportation, but our car speed limits are where they were 30 years ago, there is still very limited train service in most central and western states, and the govt is doing its best to harass people out of flying commercial air. We suck, and we're doing it to ourselves.

    1. Re:Awaiting next revolution by careysub · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... it could be fast rail if it weren't for the fact that excessive govt regulation [emphasis added] and problems getting right-of-way means that it will never happen...

      Come again? Since every high speed rail system in the world has been built by using large government subsidies (just like the original U.S. transcontinental rail system), and usually at least a government partnership if not as an outright government-run project, how is "excessive government regulation" to blame for the lack of high speed rail? Note also that those rights-of-way can only be obtained only through the government exercising its right of eminent domain.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
  8. Re:Travel has purpose. by genner · · Score: 5, Funny

    We travel to see stuff. Modern media has made much of that superfluous.

    We travel to get stuff. Having stuff show up is less time wasted. Instead of going to buy tools, for example, I shop online and they show up. I can mix Ebay, Craigslist, and new vendors while I fap to pr0n and surf Slashdot.

    We travel to see people. It's now more convenient to chat with a world of friends without bothering to meet in person very often.

    We travel to learn stuff. Now information is at our fingertips.

    Travel was a hassle before the TSA fondle-fest. Fuck travel.

    You definitely need to get out of the house more often.