Americans steadily drove more and more for nearly six decades, until the Great Recession interrupted that trend for the first time.
In Maine, for instance, drivers generally traveled more on the roads each consecutive year throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Then, Maine hit “peak travel” in 2006 at more than 15 billion miles. The state has yet to top that level. Nationally, peak travel set in at 3 trillion miles in 2008.
Now, after several years of relatively stagnant driving trends, the nation’s drivers could be on track to set another travel record. The Federal Highway Administration announced last month that between Jan. 1 and May 31, Americans drove 1.26 trillion miles, surpassing the record of 1.23 trillion miles set eight years before.
Maine, however, is still far from surpassing its peak travel. In 2011, the number of miles traveled fell to an 11-year low of 14.2 billion. While the number recovered slightly to 14.5 billion last year, it is still 500 million miles fewer than the 2006 peak.
Even as driving appears to be on the post-recession uptick, some researchers aren’t convinced we’ll ever see a return to peak driving behavior in Maine or the rest of the U.S.
— Individual drivers were driving less well before the recession began. Researcher Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute argues American drivers actually hit peak travel as early as 2004.
When Sivak dug into the travel data, he found that drivers generally have been traveling less on average each year. The average driver drove more in 2004 (13,711 miles) than in 2007 (13,080 miles), at the official start of the recession. The average had fallen even more to 12,621 miles in 2013, according to Sivak.
Maine drivers also have, on average, put less mileage on their cars in that time, though Maine drivers travel more each year on average than their counterparts elsewhere in the U.S. In 2004, the average Maine driver drove 15,087 miles. In 2007, that number had slipped to 14,804. In 2013, it was 14,236.
According to Sivak, these changes reflect many fundamental behavior changes, such as the rise of telecommuting and use of alternative transportation, that aren’t necessarily dependent on economic cycles.
— The number of workers who telecommute has been on the rise. According to Global Workplace Analytics, the number of workers who telecommute has risen from 1.8 million in 2005 to more than 3.2 million in 2012, a 79 percent increase.
Over this same period, the number of Mainers who worked from home rose from 29,503 to 33,228, a 12.6 percent increase, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While only about 2.6 percent of the workforce telecommutes, it has risen in popularity as more job duties can be done over the Internet and workers demand more flexibility. With more workers able to work remotely, there is less of a need to make a daily commute to the office.
— People are biking and walking to work more than ever. The portion of workers who make the daily commute by car fell from 88 percent in 2000 to 83 percent in 2013, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. Instead, more people are biking, walking or even using public transportation.
For instance, the Greater Portland Metro, a Portland-area public bus system, saw the number of rides people took on its buses increase 9.6 percent between 2005 and 2014, to 1,489,116 rides from 1,357,579.
Today, people are “more aware of [public transportation] as an option” for their commute, said Denise Beck, marketing director for Portland Metro.
A recent Census Bureau survey confirms the Pew findings. The most marked change, according to the Census Bureau, is that the number of people biking to work grew from 488,000 in 2000 to 780,000 in 2012, a 60 percent increase.
Driving this growth have been millennials, those born between 1983 and 2000, who are more likely than baby boomers to bike, walk or use public transportation, according to a 2014 report by U.S. PIRG, a nonprofit advocacy group.
For example, 20 percent of millennials use public transportation at least once per week, compared with only 10 percent of baby boomers. According to U.S. PIRG, 19 percent of millennials biked at least once per week compared with 12 percent of boomers.
— Even those millennials who are driving are just driving less. According to U.S. PIRG, the average miles traveled by drivers ages 16 to 34 fell from 10,300 in 2001 to 7,900 in 2009, the most recent figure available. In fact, fewer millennials than boomers rely on the car as their primary mode of transportation — 77 percent of millennials, compared with 90 percent of boomers.
Why are millennials breaking with away from America’s love affair with the car? For about 53 percent, the cost of driving is too high, according to the U.S. PIRG report.
The first millennials became old enough to drive around 2000, back when gas prices were well under $2 per gallon. Since then, gas prices have continued to climb, at times to well over $3 per gallon. For many millennials, there is little memory of an era of cheap gas, the U.S. PIRG report said.
Millennials also carry a larger amount of student debt than previous generations, so they are less likely to buy a home or car than previous generations.
Not only are millennials choosing to drive less, some are even putting off or foregoing getting a driver’s license.
“Back in the ’90s, most people who could drive had a license,” but that’s not as true today, said John Melrose, a former commissioner of the Maine Department of Transportation.
In Maine, the number of drivers ages 16 to 34 shrank at a faster rate between 2003 and 2013 than the population of 15- to 34-year-olds — 3.4 percent and 2 percent, respectively — according to driver’s license data from the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Meanwhile, the number of drivers age 55 and older grew 36.5 percent between 2003 and 2013, while the 55-and-older population grew only 31 percent over the same period.
Without an influx of younger drivers, Maine could see a continued downward trend in driving as older drivers eventually put away their keys, Melrose said.