US drivers near 1 trillion miles in early 2015

The Federal Highway Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation recently released estimates that show U.S. citizens have driven almost 1 trillion miles (987.8 billion miles) within the first four months of 2015.

This figure surpasses the previous four-month record from January through April 2007 of 965.5 billion miles. The April figures demonstrate that U.S. driving has steadily risen for 14 months in a row.

The monthly estimate for U.S. road travel report titled “Traffic Volume Trends” demonstrates that U.S. drivers have 267.9 billion vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). This is the highest mileage for April as well as the first quarter of any previous year.

April also shows seasonally adjusted data for VMT comparison with other months, which are collected from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. In April 2015, seasonally adjusted vehicle miles reached 262.4 billion miles, which is a 3.7 percent (9.5 billion VMT) rise when compared with April 2014. This figure accounts for bus, passenger vehicle and truck travel.

Indiana had the most unadjusted single-state traffic increase at 14.8 percent. This figure is in comparison with April 2014. Hawaii stands in second place with an 8.1 percent increase and North Dakota is third with a 7.4 percent increase. The data shows that the nation’s transportation infrastructure requires more investments.