State DOTs still depending on outdated and wildly optimistic forecasts of increases in automobile travel to plan roads and highways | Streetsblog USA

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

Around the nation, state departments of transportation have routinely overestimated the growth of automobile traffic and used these exaggerated projections to justify billions of dollars of new roads. The State Smart Transportation Institute analyzed an aggregation of state traffic forecasts prepared annually by the USDOT. SSTI’s analysis showed that 20-year projections overestimated future traffic volumes in every single year states’ reports could be compared against data on actual miles driven by Americans.

Traffic projections from state and regional transportation authorities have been wildly off. Source: State Smart Transportation Campaign

Traffic projections from state and regional transportation authorities have been wildly off. Source: State Smart Transportation Institute

As we and others have noted, there’s been a sea-change in American travel habits, influenced by changing gasoline prices and a generational change it attitudes toward travel and urban living. Yet many state forecasting models are still grounded in unexamined extrapolations of trends dating back to the 1990s.

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State DOTs still depending on outdated and wildly optimistic forecasts of increases in automobile travel to plan roads and highways | Streetsblog USA