Graph and download economic data for Moving 12-Month Total Vehicle Miles Traveled (M12MTVUSM227NFWA) from Dec 1970 to Apr 2025 about miles, travel, vehicles, and USA.

The number of vehicle-miles traveled on all roads in the United States decreased by some 1.55 percent to approximately 3.17 trillion in 2022. Records for 2019 reported the highest annual level on record, at just under 3.3 trillion vehicle-miles traveled.

Graph and download economic data for Vehicle Miles Traveled (TRFVOLUSM227SFWA) from Jan 2000 to Apr 2025 about miles, travel, vehicles, and USA.

The graph displays the total miles of travel in the U.S. from 1980 to 2022. The x-axis represents the years, while the y-axis shows the total miles traveled. The data reveals that the highest number of miles driven occurred in 2019, with over 3.26 trillion miles traveled, while 2020 saw a significant drop to approximately 2.9 trillion miles due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, miles driven steadily increased from 1980 to 2019, with some fluctuations in later years, reflecting shifts in driving habits, economic factors, and public health events.

In the United States, vehicle miles traveled annually by registered passenger cars in the United States generally increased between 1975 and 2019, from just over one trillion miles to just under 1.4 trillion miles. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among those under the age of 55 in the United States.

This table contains data on the annual miles traveled by place of occurrence and by mode of transportation (vehicle, pedestrian, bicycle), for California, its regions, counties, and cities/towns. The ratio uses data from the California Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Census Bureau. The table is part of a series of indicators in the Healthy Communities Data and Indicators Project of the Office of Health Equity. Miles traveled by individuals and their choice of mode – car, truck, public transit, walking or bicycling – have a major impact on mobility and population health. Miles traveled by automobile offers extraordinary personal mobility and independence, but it is also associated with air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming, road traffic injuries, and sedentary lifestyles. Active modes of transport – bicycling and walking alone and in combination with public transit – offer opportunities for physical activity, which has many documented health benefits. More information about the data table and a data dictionary can be found in the About/Attachments section.

The graph displays the average miles driven per person in the United States from 1980 to 2022. The x-axis represents the years, while the y-axis shows the average miles driven annually by one person. The data shows that the lowest average was 10,511 miles in 1980, and the highest was 14,906 miles in 2004. A notable drop occurred in 2020, with the average falling to 12,724 miles, likely reflecting reduced travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the data highlights a long-term increase in driving over the decades, with fluctuations in recent years.

Motor vehicles traveled about **** trillion vehicle-miles on U.S. roads in 2023. That year, traffic volume increased by approximately *** percent on the previous year's level: around **** trillion vehicle-miles traveled.

United States - Moving 12-Month Total Vehicle Miles Traveled was 3283502.00000 Mil. of Miles in March of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Moving 12-Month Total Vehicle Miles Traveled reached a record high of 3284595.00000 in February of 2020 and a record low of 1120328.00000 in December of 1970. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Moving 12-Month Total Vehicle Miles Traveled - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

United States - Vehicle Miles Traveled was 251270.00000 Mil. in January of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Vehicle Miles Traveled reached a record high of 296475.00000 in July of 2021 and a record low of 167617.00000 in April of 2020. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Vehicle Miles Traveled - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

**This data set was last updated 3:30 PM ET Monday, January 4, 2021. The last date of data in this dataset is December 31, 2020. **

Overview

Data shows that mobility declined nationally since states and localities began shelter-in-place strategies to stem the spread of COVID-19. The numbers began climbing as more people ventured out and traveled further from their homes, but in parallel with the rise of COVID-19 cases in July, travel declined again.

This distribution contains county level data for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) from StreetLight Data, Inc, updated three times a week. This data offers a detailed look at estimates of how much people are moving around in each county.

Data available has a two day lag - the most recent data is from two days prior to the update date. Going forward, this dataset will be updated by AP at 3:30pm ET on Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week.

This data has been made available to members of AP’s Data Distribution Program. To inquire about access for your organization - publishers, researchers, corporations, etc. - please click Request Access in the upper right corner of the page or email kromano@ap.org. Be sure to include your contact information and use case.

Findings

• Nationally, data shows that vehicle travel in the US has doubled compared to the seven-day period ending April 13, which was the lowest VMT since the COVID-19 crisis began. In early December, travel reached a low not seen since May, with a small rise leading up to the Christmas holiday.
• Average vehicle miles traveled continues to be below what would be expected without a pandemic - down 38% compared to January 2020. September 4 reported the largest single day estimate of vehicle miles traveled since March 14.
• New Jersey, Michigan and New York are among the states with the largest relative uptick in travel at this point of the pandemic - they report almost two times the miles traveled compared to their lowest seven-day period. However, travel in New Jersey and New York is still much lower than expected without a pandemic. Other states such as New Mexico, Vermont and West Virginia have rebounded the least. ## About This Data The county level data is provided by StreetLight Data, Inc, a transportation analysis firm that measures travel patterns across the U.S.. The data is from their Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) Monitor which uses anonymized and aggregated data from smartphones and other GPS-enabled devices to provide county-by-county VMT metrics for more than 3,100 counties. The VMT Monitor provides an estimate of total vehicle miles travelled by residents of each county, each day since the COVID-19 crisis began (March 1, 2020), as well as a change from the baseline average daily VMT calculated for January 2020. Additional columns are calculations by AP.

Included Data

01_vmt_nation.csv - Data summarized to provide a nationwide look at vehicle miles traveled. Includes single day VMT across counties, daily percent change compared to January and seven day rolling averages to smooth out the trend lines over time.

02_vmt_state.csv - Data summarized to provide a statewide look at vehicle miles traveled. Includes single day VMT across counties, daily percent change compared to January and seven day rolling averages to smooth out the trend lines over time.

03_vmt_county.csv - Data providing a county level look at vehicle miles traveled. Includes VMT estimate, percent change compared to January and seven day rolling averages to smooth out the trend lines over time.

Additional Data Queries

* Filter for specific state - filters 02_vmt_state.csv daily data for specific state.

* Filter counties by state - filters 03_vmt_county.csv daily data for counties in specific state.

* Filter for specific county - filters 03_vmt_county.csv daily data for specific county.

Interactive

The AP has designed an interactive map to show percent change in vehicle miles traveled by county since each counties lowest point during the pandemic:

@(https://interactives.ap.org/vmt-map/)

Interactive Embed Code

Using the Data

This data can help put your county's mobility in context with your state and over time. The data set contains different measures of change - daily comparisons and seven day rolling averages. The rolling average allows for a smoother trend line for comparison across counties and states. To get the full picture, there are also two available baselines - vehicle miles traveled in January 2020 (pre-pandemic) and vehicle miles traveled at each geography's low point during the pandemic.

Caveats

• The data from StreetLight Data, Inc does not include data for some low-population counties with low VMT (<5,000 miles/day in their baseline month of January 2020). In our analyses, we only include the 2,779 counties that have daily data for the entire period (March 1, 2020 to current).
• In some cases, a lack of decline in mobility from March to April can indicate that movement in the county is essential to keeping the larger economy going or that residents need to drive further to reach essentials businesses like grocery stores compared to other counties.
• The VMT includes both passenger and commercial miles, so truck traffic is included. However, the proxy is based on the "total number of trip starts and ends for all devices whose most frequent location is in this county". It does not count the VMT of trucks cutting through a county.
• For those instances where travel begins in one county and ends in another, the county where the miles are recorded is always the vehicle’s home county. ###### Contact reporter Angeliki Kastanis at akastanis@ap.org.

Graph and download economic data for Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) from Jan 2000 to Mar 2025 about miles, travel, vehicles, and USA.

Daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is a distance- and volume-based measure of driving on roadways for all motorized vehicle types—car, bus, motorcycle, and truck—on an average day. Per capita VMT is the same measure divided by the same area's population for the same year. Per vehicle VMT divides VMT by the number of household vehicles available by residents of that geography in the same year. These three value types can be selected in the dropdown in the first chart below. Use the legend items to explore various geographies. The second chart below shows per capita and total personal vehicles available to the region’s households from the American Community Survey.

Normalizing VMT by a county or region's population, or household vehicles, is helpful for context, but does not have complete parity with what is measured in VMT estimates. People and vehicles come into the region from other places, just as people and vehicles leave the region to visit other places. VMT per capita compares all miles traveled on the region's roads to the region's population (for all ages) from the U.S. Census Bureau's latest population estimates. Vehicle counts for VMT are classified by vehicle types, but not by vehicle ownership. In 2017, statewide estimates for VMT by motorcycles, passenger cars, and two-axle single-unit trucks with four wheels made up 88% of Pennsylvania's VMT, and 95% of New Jersey's. These vehicle types are highly likely to be personal vehicles, owned by households, but a small percent could be fleet vehicles of companies or governments. The remaining VMT is made up of vehicle types like school and commercial buses and trucks with more than two axles so they are highly likely to be commercial vehicles.

VITAL SIGNS INDICATOR Daily Miles Traveled (T15)

FULL MEASURE NAME Per-capita vehicle miles traveled

LAST UPDATED July 2017

DESCRIPTION Daily miles traveled, commonly referred to as vehicle miles traveled (VMT), reflects the total and per-person number of miles traveled in personal vehicles on a typical weekday. The dataset includes metropolitan area, regional and county tables for per-capita vehicle miles traveled.

DATA SOURCE Federal Highway Administration: Highway Statistics Series 2015 Table HM-71; limited to urbanized areas https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics.cfm

U.S. Census Bureau: Summary File 1 2010 http://factfinder2.census.gov

CONTACT INFORMATION vitalsigns.info@mtc.ca.gov

METHODOLOGY NOTES (across all datasets for this indicator) "Vehicle miles traveled reflects the mileage accrued within the county and not necessarily the residents of that county; even though most trips are due to local residents, additional VMT can be accrued by through-trips. City data was thus discarded due to this limitation and the analysis only examine county and regional data, where through-trips are generally less common.

The metropolitan area comparison was performed by summing all of the urbanized areas within each metropolitan area (9-nine region for the San Francisco Bay Area and the primary MSA for all others). For the metro analysis, no VMT data is available outside of other urbanized areas; it is only available for intraregional analysis purposes.

VMT per capita is calculated by dividing VMT by an estimate of the traveling population. The traveling population does not include people living in institutionalized facilities, which are defined by the Census. Because institutionalized population is not estimated each year, the proportion of people living in institutionalized facilities from the 2010 Census was applied to the total population estimates for all years."

The sample geographic areas for VMT are based on the 'Census Defined Urban Areas' and change every 10 years, as the census data changes. These 'Census Defined Urban Areas' differ from the city boundaries. It is important to note that there is a time lag between when the census data was collected and the implementation of the new 'Census Defined Urban Area or Boundary'. In the above graph, the implementation of the 1990 Census boundary does not appear until 1993 for Portland, OR only (noted by the uptick in the curve in 1993). The use of the new 2000 Census Boundary did not occur until 2004, for Portland, OR only; note a similar increase upward in the graph in 2004. However, the data shown above for 2010 is based on the 2010 Census population and the updated Defined Urban Area or Boundary. The 2011-18 figures likewise use the updated 2010 Census information and were adjusted for population changes in 2011-18.

2009-2018 Data Sources: The data for Portland, OR was received from the ODOT, Oregon Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) office in Salem, Oregon. The information for Vancouver, WA was received from the Washington State DOT, HPMS office in Olympia, Washington. These data were the official state's submittals to the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Office in Washington, D.C. The 2010-2013 data are based on the 2010 Census and updates.

1990-2008 Urban Areas & National Average Data Sources: The data is from information published by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in Washington, D.C. The DVMT/ Person can be located in the FHWA's publication 'Highway Statistics'; 4.4.5 Urbanized Area Summaries, Section 4.4.5.2, Selected Characteristics, Table HM-72. The website for the 'Highway Statistics' series is located at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics.cfm The 2008 data is located at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2008/hm72.cfm The 2008 and earlier National Average of DVMT/ Person, are calculated by dividing the 'Total DVMT' for all Federal-Aid Urban Areas, by total 'Estimated Population' as it appears on Sheet 9 of Table HM-72, which lists all the Federal-Aid Urbanized Areas in the U.S.

2009-2018 Urban Areas & National Average Data Sources: Figures were not published for 2009 by the FHWA. 2010 urban area data was published in Table HM-71, at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2010/hm71.cfm However; the data was based on the year 2000 population, it was not adjusted for 2010, and not useful in calculations. The FHWA did publish Table HM-71 in February 2013, with updated 2011 urban area data, located: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2011/hm71.cfm The population and travel agree with information received from Oregon's and Washington's HPMS offices. In order to show a continuous graph line for 2009-10, the 2008 National DVMT/person information was averaged with the 2011 data. The 2011 national figure is the average for all 498 urbanized areas listed in the Table HM-71. 2012 urban area data was published in Table HM-71, at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2012/hm71.cfm However, since the data was based on the year 2000 population (i.e., identical issue with FHWA 2010 data), it was not in included in these DVMT calculations. 2013 urban area data was published in Tables HM-72, at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/hm72.cfm 2014 urban area data was published in Tables HM-72, at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/hm72.cfm 2015 urban area data was published in Tables HM-72, at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2015/hm72.cfm 2016 urban area data was published in Tables HM-72, at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2016/hm72.cfm 2017 urban area data was published in Tables HM-72, at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2017/hm72.cfm 2018 urban area data was published in Tables HM-72, at: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2018/hm72.cfm

"A Federal-Aid Urbanized Area is an area with 50,000 or more persons that, at a minimum, encompasses the land area delineated as the urbanized area by the Bureau of the Census." (from Sheet 8, in Table HM-71, as noted above). Portland-Vancouver, OR-WA is a Federal-Aid Urbanized Area (UZA-27). The geographic area for each component (the Oregon and Washington portions of the Portland-Vancouver data set) are uniquely defined by the FHWA.

This data set represents the number of vehicle miles traveled annually by trucks in the United States in 2016, with a breakdown by network and state. In 2016, trucks traveled some 13 billion miles on rural road networks in Texas.

Vehicle miles traveled increased 4.2% year-over-year in July 2015, continuing an upward trajectory that started in March 2014. This ended an unprecedented five-year period of flat rolling 12-month totals following the ‘Great Recession’ of December 2007-June 2009. Cheaper gasoline prices likely account for some of the increase, with the national average per gallon declining from $3.69 in July 2014 to $2.88 in July 2015. The rebound of the national economy, increased job growth, and expanding population are additional factors.

In 2022, the total length of U.S. urban and rural public roads and streets was between *** and *** million miles. Rural mileage made up over ** percent of the country's total mileage.

Daily Miles Traveled (T14)

FULL MEASURE NAME
Total vehicle miles traveled

LAST UPDATED
August 2022

DESCRIPTION
Daily miles traveled, commonly referred to as vehicle miles traveled (VMT), reflects the total and per-person number of miles traveled in personal vehicles on a typical weekday. The dataset includes metropolitan area, regional and county tables for total vehicle miles traveled.

DATA SOURCE
California Department of Transportation: California Public Road Data/Highway Performance Monitoring System - http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tsip/hpms/datalibrary.php
2001-2020

Federal Highway Administration: Highway Statistics - https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2020/hm71.cfm
2020

California Department of Finance: E-4 Historical Population Estimates for Cities, Counties, and the State - https://dof.ca.gov/forecasting/demographics/estimates/
2001-2020

US Census Population and Housing Unit Estimates - https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest.html
2020

CONTACT INFORMATION
vitalsigns.info@mtc.ca.gov

METHODOLOGY NOTES (across all datasets for this indicator)
Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reflects the mileage accrued within the county and not necessarily the residents of that county; even though most trips are due to local residents, additional VMT can be accrued by through-trips. City data was thus discarded due to this limitation and the analysis only examines county and regional data, where through-trips are generally less common.

The metropolitan area comparison was performed by summing all of the urbanized areas for which the majority of its population falls within a given metropolitan area (9-county region for the San Francisco Bay Area and the primary metropolitan statistical area (MSA) for all others). For the metro analysis, no VMT data is available in rural areas; it is only available for intraregional analysis purposes. VMT per capita is calculated by dividing VMT by an estimate of the traveling population.