The U.S. passenger transportation system has grown in both extent and use over the last several decades despite a recent decline in overall transportation activity due to the 2007–2009 economic recession. This expansion is in response to long-term growth in the number of people who travel as well as the distance traveled by each person.

Person-Miles Traveled

Over the last three decades, the total number of miles traveled by passengers has more than doubled. The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), which primarily examines local travel, shows a 169.5 percent increase in annual person-miles traveled¹ (PMT) between 1969 and 2001. Between 2001 and 2009, however, PMT fell by 1.4 percent as people traveled less frequently and made shorter trips. The average number of person-trips declined from 4.1 trips per day in 2001 to 3.8 trips per day in 2009, while average person-trip length declined from 10.0 miles per trip to 9.7 miles per trip. Passenger travel trends also indicate that average daily PMT per person declined between 1995 and 2009.

Between 2010 and 2013, passenger-miles² of travel by commercial aviation, transit, and intercity rail increased, rising by 5.3, 7.3, and 6.1 percent, respectively. Miles traveled by these for-hire transportation modes reached record levels in 2013.

Many demographic factors influence daily passenger travel patterns. On average, Americans traveled 36.1 miles per day in 2009, a 10.2 percent decline from 2001. Men traveled more than women, averaging 40.9 miles per day compared with 31.5 miles per day for women. For both genders, people in their prime working years traveled more, with persons aged 36 to 65 traveling the most.

Historically, higher income households travel more miles than lower income households. As shown in figure 2-2, average annual person-miles of travel was directly related to household income in 2001 and 2009. Between 2001 and 2009, personal travel declined for households of all income groups, with the largest declines in middle-income households earning between $50,000 and $60,000 annually.

Why We Travel

Personal local travel is dominated by frequent, repetitive patterns, such as a daily commute to work. The most common reasons for travel are for family and personal errands, social and recreational activities, and work or work-related purposes.

In 2009 work and work-related trips were longer than trips for other purposes, making up 25.3 percent of total miles traveled but only 18.7 percent of total trips. Trips for shopping, personal errands, and social and recreational purposes were shorter but more frequent than commuting trips.

During an average week, people take more trips on weekdays than weekends. Fridays were the busiest days, largely because people make social and recreational trips in addition to regular work and school trips. Over the last 15 years, about one-fifth of trips involved trip-chaining, or a sequence of trips with stops of less than 30 minutes. For example, people often run errands on the way to and from work. Trip-chains can reduce travel times, distance traveled, and fuel, but can also contribute to congestion because these trips often occur during peak travel periods. The least travel occurred on Sundays, although the lower numbers of work trips were partially offset by additional social/recreational and church trips.

Time Spent Traveling

People spent less time traveling in 2013 than 2003. On weekdays people spent 5.2 fewer minutes traveling per day, a decrease of 6.0 percent. On weekends and holidays people spent 4.3 fewer minutes traveling per day, a 4.7 percent decrease.

Time spent traveling reached a low in 2008 in the midst of the last recession. Due to a post-recession increase in weekday travel time combined with a continued decline in weekend travel time, average weekday and weekend/holiday travel time were almost equal in 2011. On average, people traveled nearly 4.0 minutes more on weekends and holidays than on weekdays.

On weekdays in 2013 the average person spent 81.6 minutes per day traveling for a variety of activities. Examining only people who engaged in travel for work, the average person spent 46.1 minutes per day traveling, the most time for all selected activities.

On weekends and holidays people spent an average of 86.1 minutes per day engaged in various travel activities, over 4.0 minutes more than on weekdays. Out of all selected activities, the average person spent the most time (45.6 minutes) traveling for activities related to socializing, relaxing, and leisure, about 11.0 minutes per day more than on weekdays. Travel related to eating and drinking on weekends and holidays accounted for 35.9 minutes—about 10 minutes more than on weekdays.

How We Travel

Most passenger travel occurs in cars or other types of personal motorized vehicles. In 2009, 83.4 percent of trips and 88.4 percent of person-miles traveled were by personal vehicle. The shares for other modes were considerably smaller—walking and biking accounted for 11.5 percent of local trips and 1.0 percent of miles in 2009, while transit’s share was 1.9 percent of trips and 1.5 percent of miles.

Between 1995 and 2009, the share of personal vehicle trips fell 3.0 percentage points, while the share of miles fell 2.8 percentage points. Trips to and from work and for work-related business accounted for 18.7 percent of trips. Walking trips, accounting for 10.4 percent of trips in 2009, were mostly for family/personal errands and social/recreational purposes. Together these two trip purposes accounted for 83.0 percent of walking trips.

Most workers (85.8 percent) drove to work in a personal vehicle in 2013, either by themselves or with others. The shares of workers using alternative modes as their primary means of transportation were smaller: 5.2 percent of workers used transit, 2.8 percent walked, and 0.6 percent biked. Although the number of commuters who drove to work increased between 2000 and 2013, the overall share of drivers decreased. The working population shifted to others modes of transportation as commuters who used transit grew by 21.8 percent, and workers who biked rose 80.6 percent.

The geography of commuting involves two opposing trends. While workers and their places of work have grown farther apart over recent decades, an increasing number of people are working at home. Part of the longer term growth in working at home had been masked in earlier decades by the number of farmers who worked where they also lived³. In 2010, 13.4 million people worked from home at least one day per week, an increase of about 4.2 million people (35.4 percent) from 1997. Home-based workers included those who worked exclusively at home as well as those who worked at both home and at a job site. Revealing a similar trend between 2000 and 2013, the American Community Survey reported an increase of over 2 million people (48.9 percent) who worked at home the week before the survey interview.

Personal Vehicles

In 1960 the number of drivers exceeded the number of vehicles by 17.6 percent—there were 0.9 vehicles for every driver. By 1972 the number of registered vehicles surpassed the number of licensed drivers. This trend, in which the number of registered vehicles outnumbered licensed drivers, peaked in 2007 with 20.5 percent more vehicles than drivers. By 2012 that ratio had dropped, but vehicles still outnumbered drivers with about 1.2 vehicles per driver.

Although household size has fallen since 1960, household vehicle ownership has increased. Before 1980, the majority of households owned one vehicle. Today the majority of households own two or more vehicles. For the last decade, about 1 in 10 households did not own a vehicle. The number of households without vehicles has remained relatively steady, at 10 to 11 million, despite a growing number of households over the past 40 years.

The majority of these “zero-vehicle” households, 64.7 percent in 2009, had a combined household income of less than $25,000. On the other end of the spectrum, the majority of households with more vehicles than drivers, 80.7 percent, had incomes over $25,000.

According to the 2009 National Household Travel Survey, 91.7 percent of households have three or less vehicles. Households with one to three drivers averaged more than one vehicle per driver, but households with four or more drivers average less than one vehicle per driver.

Pedestrians and Bicycles

Although walking and biking account for a small portion of passenger travel, 11.5 percent of trips and 1.0 percent of miles traveled, the National Household Travel Survey suggests that a growing number of Americans are walking and bicycling. In 2009 walking accounted for 10.4 percent of trips, and biking accounted for 1.0 percent of trips.

Nationwide, 3.4 percent of commuters walk or bike to work, accounting for 2.8 and 0.6 percent of workers, respectively. While less than 1.0 percent of Americans bike to work on a regular basis, the number of bicycle commuters has nearly doubled since 2000.

Walking and biking commuters make up a greater share of workers in urban areas. In principal cities within metropolitan areas, 4.3 percent of workers walk to work, compared with 2.4 percent of workers in suburban areas and 1.9 percent of workers outside metropolitan areas.

High rates of walking and biking are seen in several small and medium-sized cities, particularly those with significant university or college presence. For large cities, Boston, MA, had the highest rate of walking commuters (15.1 percent), while neighboring Cambridge, MA, had the highest rate of medium-sized cities (24.0 percent). Portland, OR, had the highest rate of bike commuters for large cities, and Boulder, CO, had the highest rate for medium cities.

Air Travel

Between January 2003 and January 2015, U.S. airlines’ total (domestic and international) passenger enplanements rose 18.1 percent. Enplanements of 64.4 million in January 2015 were the highest since the recession ended in June 2009 and the fourth highest of all-time. During this period, growth of international enplanements (52.3 percent) outpaced domestic enplanements (14.3 percent). While domestic and total enplanements remain below prerecession levels, passengers are traveling longer distances. Passengers traveled 72.8 billion revenue passenger-miles in January 2015, the second highest of all-time, and 0.7 percent less than the all-time record set in the previous month.

Network airlines, which operate a significant portion of their flights using at least one hub where connections are made for flights to down-line destinations or spoke cities, carry the largest portion of U.S. airline passengers. In 2013 the top three network airlines—United, Delta, and American—together carried 39.7 percent of total passengers traveling on U.S. airlines. The share of network airline passengers, however, has declined over the last decade, from 62.0 percent in 2003 to 50.0 percent in 2013. Meanwhile, low-cost airlines have carried an increasing number of passengers. In 2003 these airlines—Southwest, AirTran, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, Virgin America, and Allegiant—carried 16.1 percent of U.S. airline passengers. By 2013 these same low-cost airlines carried 26.9 percent of passengers.
The busiest U.S. airport in 2013, measured by the number of enplanements, was Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, followed by Los Angeles International Airport. The top 50 busiest airports accounted for 84.0 percent of the 743.2 million annual U.S. passenger enplanements.

From 2013 to 2014, all but one of the top 10 domestic markets experienced an increase in enplaned passengers. Atlanta, served by three airports, was the top market with 41.4 million domestic enplanements in 2014. The largest growth was seen in the Dallas/Fort Worth market, up 6.5 percent from 2013 to 2014. Washington, DC, experienced a 0.4 percent decline in enplanements.

Southwest carried the most passengers from domestic airports of any airline in 2013 and 2014, carrying 9.9 percent more passengers in 2014 than in 2013. Delta retained its second place ranking with an 8.0 percent increase in domestic enplanements. Of the top 10 airlines, the largest percentage declines were reported by 2 regional airlines that provide contract service for mainline carriers; Envoy was down 8.5 percent and ExpressJet was down 6.4 percent.

Public Transit

Transit riders in the United States took 10.5 billion unlinked passenger trips⁴ in 2014. About half, 49.5 percent, of these trips occurred on motor buses, and 42.4 percent occurred on rail transit modes (commuter rail, heavy rail, light rail, and streetcar). Since 2000 the number of transit trips has steadily increased, driven largely by travel on rail transit modes.

National trends in transit use, however, do not tell the full picture of travel in individual metropolitan areas. Commuting by transit makes up a greater share of trips in larger metropolitan areas: 12.7 percent in areas with populations over 5 million, 5.8 percent in areas between 2.5 and 5 million, and 2.5 percent in areas between 1 and 2.5 million. At the highest extreme, 58.7 percent of workers living in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City, commute by transit and another 20.9 percent walk.

Motorcoach and Intercity Bus

The motorcoach industry, including charter, tour, sightseeing, airport shuttle, commuter, scheduled, and special operations services, provided 605 million person-trips in the United States and Canada in 2013, down 5.1 percent from 2012. The number of motorcoach carriers fell 3.9 percent, and the number of coaches fell 6.8 percent. This reduction in size was largely due to companies that went out of business, merged with other companies, or were acquired by larger companies. Although the motorcoach industry decreased in size, the number of passenger trips per motorcoach increased every year since 2010. The average motorcoach completed 10.8 percent more passenger trips in 2013 than in 2010.

Despite a decline in several measures of the motorcoach industry as a whole, intercity bus travel expanded at a steady pace between 2010 and 2014. During this period, the number of intercity bus operations, which include conventional and discount city-to-city bus operations, grew 13.2 percent.

Conventional service providers, such as Greyhound and Peter Pan, consistently provided over 3,000 operations per year between 2010 and 2014. While these conventional services accounted for the majority of operations, 76 percent in 2014, discount city-to-city bus operations nearly doubled in the same period. Together, Megabus and BoltBus accounted for over 80 percent of discount city-to-city bus operations.

Passenger Rail

Amtrak is the primary operator of intercity passenger rail service in the United States. Ridership on Amtrak has been growing since 2000, reaching a record 31 million passengers in fiscal year 2012.

In fiscal year 2014, 12 of the Nation’s 25 busiest Amtrak stations served the Northeast Corridor. Passengers along the Northeast Corridor accounted for well over one-third of systemwide ridership. The busiest station within the entire Amtrak network was New York City’s Penn Station. Ridership was also high in Chicago as well as at several locations in California and the Pacific Northwest.

Waterborne Travel

U.S. ferries carried an estimated 103 million passengers and just over 37 million vehicles in 2009. Washington, New York, and California had the greatest number of ferry passengers, accounting for 15.0, 6.8, and 7.7 percent of total passengers, respectively. Ferries in Washington carried the greatest proportion of vehicles as a percent of total vehicle boardings (26.9 percent), followed by Louisiana (12.4 percent) and Alaska (11.6 percent). The states with the most ferry vessels were California (62 vessels), New York (56 vessels), Massachusetts (52 vessels), and Washington (46 vessels). Nearly all of the vessels carried passengers (93.4 percent), while less than half carried vehicles (43.6 percent), and less than a quarter carried freight (22.2 percent).

The North American cruise industry embarked 17.6 million passengers in 2013, a 3.9 percent increase from 2012⁵. While the number of cruise passengers dipped slightly in 2008 and 2009, passenger levels returned to prerecession levels by 2010 and have continued to grow.

In 2011 the top North American cruise destination was the Western Caribbean followed by the Bahamas, accounting for 27.0 percent and 20.8 percent of total cruise ship visits, respectively. Between 2005 and 2011, visits to the Bahamas almost doubled, with 48.7 percent more visits. Mexico saw the greatest decline in cruise ship traffic with almost half as many visits in 2011 as in 2005.

Foreign Travel

In 2014 U.S residents made 68.3 million overnight trips to other countries, a 12.3 percent increase from 2000. Over half, 54.9 percent, of overnight international travel by U.S. residents was to neighboring countries: 25.4 million visits to Mexico and 12.1 million visits to Canada. The busiest month for overnight international trips in 2014 was July (7.6 million), and the least busy was February (4.4 million).

U.S. residents made 30.8 million overnight visits to countries outside of North America in 2014. Between 2000 and 2014, travel to overseas countries grew by 14.6 percent. Travel to Europe fell by 9.4 percent, while visits to the Middle East nearly tripled since 2000.

A record 74.7 million foreign travelers visited the United States in 2014, up 6.9 percent from the previous year. International visitation grew every year since the end of the recession in 2009. The largest visitor markets in 2014 were Canada (30.7 percent) and Mexico (23.2 percent).

Travelers from countries outside of North America accounted for 46.1 percent of international visitation in 2014. The top tourist-generating countries outside North America were the United Kingdom (5.3 percent), Japan (4.8 percent), Brazil (3.0 percent), and China (2.9 percent). Combined with Canada and Mexico, these six markets accounted for 70.0 percent of all 2014 international visits. In 2000 China was the 24th largest market for international visitors to the United States. By 2014 visitation from China increased by over 700 percent, and the country is now the 6th largest market.

Although Canada and Mexico are the largest visitor markets, incoming persons at the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico land borders have declined since 2000. In 2014, 73.5 percent of incoming person crossings were along the U.S.-Mexico border, and 26.5 percent of crossings occurred through ports of entry along the U.S.- Canada border. Along the U.S.-Canada Border, person crossings reached a low of 56.6 million crossings in 2009 before rising to 62.6 million crossings in 2014.

In 2014 more than one million persons crossed into the United States through 33 border ports of entry: 19 along the U.S.–Mexico border and 14 along the U.S.–Canada border. Texas is home to 11 Customs border ports of entry with a total of 80.3 million person crossings. Along the U.S.–Mexico border, California had the second most person crossings with 67.9 million persons crossing at 6 ports of entry. Along the U.S.–Canada border, the State of New York had the greatest number of crossings with 19.7 million persons crossing at 6 ports of entry. Washington had the second highest number of crossings with 16.3 million persons crossing at 15 ports of entry.

There were 23 airports in 2014 with more than one million incoming passengers from international origins. New York (JFK), Miami, and Los Angeles airports received the most international passengers, with 13.6, 9.6, and 8.9 million passengers, respectively. From 2013 to 2014, the largest increase in international passengers was at Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport, up 18.4 percent, with Denver International Airport second at 10.7 percent. Although ranking second for the most incoming international passengers, Miami International Airport had the greatest decrease, down 5.0 percent.

¹ Person-miles traveled (PMT) is an estimate of the aggregate distances traveled by all persons on a given trip based on the estimated transportation-network-miles traveled on that trip. The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) measures PMT by all modes of travel, including private vehicle, transit, walking and biking.

² Passenger-miles differ from person-miles traveled estimates in the National Household Travel Survey. Passenger-miles are the cumulative sum of the distances ridden by each passenger and do not include mileage accrued by the vehicle operator and crew.  A passenger-mile is one passenger transported one mile.

³ American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Commuting in America 2013 (October 2013), available traveltrends.transportation.org as of March 2015.

⁴ Unlinked passenger trips are the number of passengers who board public transportation vehicles. Passengers are counted each time they board vehicles no matter how many vehicles they use to travel from their origin to their destination.

⁵ Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), The Contribution of the North American Cruise Industry to the U.S. Economy in 2013 (September 2014), available at www.cruising.org as of April 2015.