From Tom Vanderbilt’s How We Drive blog:
“According to the 2001 National Household Travel Survey, the average vehicle travels 3,956 miles for family and personal business. In 1969, that average was 1,270 miles. We’ve tripled our family business mileage, but VMTs for business commuting only increased 36 percent during the same period. Looks like our family miles are to blame.”
Makes sense to me. As a whole we have been moving farther and farther from our jobs, but more significantly we are not as close to our children’s schools and activities as we once were. I did grow up in a small town and was able to ride my bike to my own baseball games and to and from school, not to mention to the baseball card shop and arcade, but for many others growing up in a city like St. Louis afforded them the ability to get wherever they needed to go without using a car. One more casualty on the road to suburbia.
