With data suggesting congestion, the number of teenagers with driver’s licenses, and the numbers of miles driven has dropped in recent years, Scientific American asks whether we have reached “peak car”:

According to the Federal Highway Administration’s “2011 Urban Congestion Trends” report, there was a 1.2 percent decline in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) last year compared with 2010. The drop follows years of stagnant growth in vehicle travel following a peak in 2007, before the economic downturn…

Her observation is true for the entire country. Rather than maintain the 50-year legacy of a 2 to 4 percent increase in vehicle travel each year, the annual number of VMT in the United States has stalled and even gone into reverse. The total number of miles driven in the United States today is the same as in 2004…

The interesting thing for Roy Kienitz, transportation infrastructure consultant and former undersecretary for policy at the Department of Transportation, is that American drivers actually started changing their individual driving habits years before the recession started.

The overall number of miles traveled by road peaked just before the market collapsed, but the number of VMT per capita peaked in 2004 and declined over the next eight years until today, according to Kienitz’s research, which is based on publicly available data.

Interesting. But I’m not sure this is the best way to measure “peak car.” While miles driven by road may be important to note, there are other factors that matters. Here are a few:

-The number of vehicles bought.

-The number of vehicles licensed.

-The number or % of people with driver’s licenses.

-The average number of trips people make on a daily basis. This gives you different information than the number of miles driven per year.

-Whether travel by other modes has increased or whether overall miles traveled is down. This would help show whether people are using cars less or really all travel is down.

Looking at all of these figures would help provide a more complete picture of whether we are at “peak car.”

Also, even if Americans are driving less overall, this doesn’t necessarily mean that cars are valued less or are less culturally important. Driving less doesn’t automatically mean most or even a significant number of Americans want to get rid of their cars or the freedom and individualism they represent.