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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.”