Highlights
- Total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in California dropped 2.3 percent or 7,959 miles, between 2018 and 2019 to 340.1 billion miles, which is similar to 2016’s 340.1 billion miles. Meanwhile, VMT per capita decreased 2.4 percent during the same period to 8,626 miles per person. Before 2019, VMT increased slightly faster than population—implying that people were traveling in surface vehicles more.
- Most of the decline in VMT is on non-Federal-Aid Highways (-6,245 million miles), which accounted for 7.5 percent of all VMT in 2019. By comparison, VMT on Federal-Aid Highways63 decreased only 0.5 percent. In addition, VMT declined by a greater percentage in rural areas (-3.3%) than in urban areas (-2.1%). Roads in rural areas accounted for one-sixth of total VMT.
63 The Federal-Aid Highway Program (FAHP), established in 1916, is an umbrella term for the separate highway programs administered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Roads under the National Highway System, which accounted for 65 percent of total VMT in 2019 in California, are part of the Federal-Aid Highways.
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