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-title: A Road Less Traveled
-date: 2011-08-04T17:03:16Z
-source: http://www.psmag.com/environment/a-road-less-traveled-26524/
-tags: economics, travel
-
----
-
-Amid the planes, trains and automobiles of the holiday season comes a
-surprising finding from transportation scientists: Passenger travel,
-which grew rapidly in the 20th century, appears to have peaked in much
-of the developed world.
-
-[A study of eight industrialized
-countries](http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2010.518291), 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](http://www.psmag.com/science-environment/peak-oil-and-the-return-of-the-jet-set-15395/).
-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](http://peec.stanford.edu/people/profiles/Lee_Schipper.php),
-who shares his time between Global Metro Studies at the University of
-California, Berkeley, and the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center at
-Stanford University.
-
-Schipper and [Adam Millard-Ball](http://www.stanford.edu/~adammb), a
-doctoral candidate at Stanford University, looked at the [gross domestic
-product](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product) per capita
-of the United States, Canada, Sweden, France, Germany, the United
-Kingdom, Japan and Australia from 1970 through 2008 and plotted it
-against the distance traveled per capita per year in each country by
-car, pickup truck, bus, train, light rail, streetcar, subway and plane.
-
-Beginning in 1970, they found, motorized passenger travel grew rapidly
-in all eight countries as greater prosperity led to rising car ownership
-and domestic air travel. But after 2000, when per capita GDP in the U.S.
-hit \$37,000, passenger travel stopped growing here. In the other
-countries, passenger travel leveled out at a GDP of \$25,000 to \$30,000
-per capita.
-
-“A major factor behind increasing energy use and carbon dioxide
-emissions since the 1970s has ceased its rise, at least for the time
-being,” Schipper said. “If it is a truly permanent change, then future
-projections of carbon dioxide emissions and fuel demand should be scaled
-back.”
-
-The peak travel study runs counter to government models predicting
-steady growth in travel demand well beyond 2030. Schipper and
-Millard-Ball say that their own findings are “suggestive rather than
-conclusive.” They speculate that highway gridlock, parking problems,
-high prices at the gas pump and an aging population that doesn’t commute
-may be contributing to peak travel. People already spend an average 1.1
-hours per day traveling from one place to another, and driving speeds
-can’t get much faster.
-
-“You can’t pronounce one single factor for the slowdown in travel,”
-Schipper said. “The most important thing will be to see what happens as
-the economy recovers. Everybody expects oil prices to go up. But with
-new fuel economy standards, more hybrids and higher oil prices competing
-against a recovery in which people buy old-fashioned gas-guzzlers, the
-question is, what is going to win?”
-
-Most of the eight countries in the study have experienced declines in
-miles traveled by car per capita in recent years. The U.S. appears to
-have peaked at an annual 8,100 miles by car per capita, and Japan is
-holding steady at 2,500 miles.
-
-There are signs of saturation in vehicle ownership, too, at about 700
-cars per 1,000 people in the U.S. — [more cars than licensed
-drivers](http://www.cleanenergycouncil.org/files/Edition27_Full_Doc.pdf)
-— and about 500 cars per 1,000 people in Japan and most of the European
-countries. Car ownership has declined in the U.S. since 2007 because of
-the recession.
-
-“You get to a point where everybody who could possibly drive, drives,”
-Schipper said.
-
-Finally, researchers found, the energy intensity of cars and light
-trucks has declined in all eight countries since 1990. (Energy intensity
-is the amount of fuel expended per passenger-mile, or one passenger
-moving one mile.)
-
-At the same time, though, vehicle occupancy declined, as more and more
-people drove alone. In the U.S, the average vehicle occupancy is 1.7
-people per car, down from 2.2 in 1970, reflecting a likely shift away
-from carpooling. So, for example, in 2007, car travel in the U.S., with
-two-thirds of the seats empty, was more energy-intensive than U.S. air
-travel, because the planes were more than 80 percent full, on average.
-
-There’s no question that the task of reducing carbon dioxide emissions
-in transportation is daunting. According to one estimate, [vehicle
-travel in the U.S. would have to fall by half by
-2050](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es801032b), or fuel
-efficiency would have to improve to 130 miles per gallon, or biofuels
-would have to make up most of the fuels on the market to avoid the worst
-impacts of climate change.
-
-And people still like to buy big, heavy cars that can accelerate to 60
-mph in less than four seconds. In a separate study this year, Schipper
-found that [technological improvements to vehicle efficiency drove down
-fuel
-use](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VGG-51J17FP-1/2/428493477db36dde85bc58942c86d824)
-per unit of horsepower by 50 percent in recent years, even as most of
-the potential fuel savings were wiped out by consumer’s preferences for
-larger, more powerful vehicles, particularly in the U.S.
-
-Still, peak travel holds a glimmer of collateral benefits for the
-industrialized world. Higher prices at the pump, including [higher fuel
-taxes](http://www.civil.ist.utl.pt/wctr12_lisboa/int_01_conference_wmessage.htm),
-could help stimulate the manufacture of smaller, less powerful cars,
-change people’s driving habits and foment a renaissance in walking and
-bicycling, reducing carbon dioxide emissions below their present levels,
-Schipper said.
-
-The growth of motorized travel in China, India and Brazil will reduce
-the overall impact of gains in the industrialized world, but they are
-still gains, he said. The average American car on the road today uses a
-third less fuel per mile than in 1973, and 20 percent less than in 1981,
-he said. For European cars, the savings is between 20 percent and 25
-percent.
-
-Traffic is paralyzed everywhere, and that will be an obstacle to
-motorization in the developing world in the end, Schipper said.
-
-“My basic thesis is, ‘There ain’t room on the road,’” he said. “You
-can’t move in Jakarta or Bangkok or any large city in Latin America or
-in any city in the wealthy part of China. I think Manila takes the
-prize. Yes, fuel economy is really important, and yes, hybrid cars will
-help. But even a car that generates no CO2 still generates a traffic
-problem.
-
-“Sadly, what is going to restrain car use the most is that you can’t
-move.”