Daily Passenger Travel

In their daily nonoccupational travel, people in the United States journeyed about 4 trillion miles in 2001, or 14,500 miles per person per year¹ [1]. On average, people traveled 40 miles per day, 88 percent of it (35 miles) in a personal vehicle² such as an automobile (figure 25). The total number of vehicle-miles for this passenger travel in 2001 was nearly 2.3 trillion.

Americans took 411 billion daily trips annually, or an average of 1,500 trips per person per year. On a daily basis, individuals averaged about four trips per day (figure 26) [1].

See box for 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS)

Source

1. U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics and Federal Highway Administration, 2001 National Household Travel Survey, Preliminary Data ReleaseVersion 1 (day trip data only), available at http://nhts.ornl.gov/, as of January 2003.

¹ These data differ from those in section 2, Passenger-Miles of Travel. See box for a discussion on differences between these two datasets.

² Personal vehicles are cars, vans, sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, other trucks, recreational vehicles (not including watercraft), and motorcycles.