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Fast Company is the latest media outlet to trumpet the decline of driving, with a look at the phenomenon dubbed “peak car use.”

Are non-automotive modes squeezing out driving? The jury's still out. Photo: GizMag

In an article titled “We Are Approaching Peak Car Use,” the magazine examines an Australian study [PDF] which found driving rates are falling in a number of cities in Europe, North America and Australia.

Explanations include rising fuel prices, the increasing appeal of urbanism, and another interesting theory: that many urban areas have reached the limit people are willing to drive as part of their daily commute (about one hour).

The study authors conclude that traffic engineers need to change their models and rethink the assumption that traffic will increase annually.

Meanwhile, new data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics adds to the body of research about the decline in driving — but whether that amounts to “peak car use” is worth further consideration. The report shows a leveling off in vehicle miles traveled, beginning at the end of 2007.

Between 1980 and 2007, urban vehicle miles traveled increased 133 percent, or almost five percent annually. But from 2007 to 2009, urban driving held steady. The change in driving in rural areas was more impressive. Rural vehicle miles traveled declined four percent from 2007 to 2009 after increasing at an average rate of two percent annually between 1980 and 2007.

These numbers don’t point to a cause. But the decline in driving aligns pretty well with the greatest period of economic contraction in a generation. And driving declines have long been linked to recessions. Which leaves us wondering: Is the decline part of a lasting trend, or does it just reflect a cyclical pattern tied to the economy?

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How big a bite gas prices take out of your wallet varies by state. Photo: Natural Resources Defense Council

It’s no secret that higher gas prices are hitting American pocketbooks hard. To a remarkable extent, however, exactly how much pain Americans are experiencing is a function of where they live.

A report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council details how geography impacts our vulnerability to gas price fluctuation.

Fuel pump pressure is most pronounced in Mississippi, where in 2010 residents spent an average $2,225 fueling up, or more than 7 percent of their income. Meanwhile, Connecticut dwellers were far better situated. Residents of this tiny Northeast state spent less than 3 percent of their income fueling up last year, or about $1,586.

The analysis found that motorists in the American Southeast fared worst, overall. South Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia registered the second, third and fourth highest-paying positions, followed by rural Idaho. Study authors attributed this to a regional orientation toward sprawl and less fuel efficient vehicles, among other factors.

Meanwhile, consumers in the Northeast suffered the least as gas prices soared. New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island followed Connecticut as the lowest spending states, with bike-friendly Colorado occupying the fifth position.

And in the first months of 2011, regional disparities have gotten even worse, the report found. April gas prices alone meant that Mississippi residents were spending a whopping 11 percent of their income on gas.

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Travelling the country this past year promoting our book Carjacked, we met some pretty remarkable people who are working to reduce the price Americans pay for mobility. In the book we detail how our car dependent transportation system offers an awesome array of downsides, though they are often obscured by the auto industry’s relentless marketing blizzard.

We were uplifted to find so many insightful and inspiring folks working to increase awareness of, and provide solutions to, the problem of car dependency. Here are just a few of them.

Get Your Undriver’s License

The authors with their Undriver's licenses.

Car crashes can be profoundly life altering, and the lasting changes they bring are only rarely positive. Julia Field’s 1987 crash, in which she totaled her Honda Civic, was an exception. At first, she reasonably feared that life without a car would be isolating and complicated. She soon came to experience it, though, as quite the opposite — liberating and simplifying. We met sunny Julia in drizzly Seattle when she cheerfully handed each of us a personal Undriver’s License™, just one of the brilliant tools of Undriving, the nonprofit initiative she founded and runs.

The guiding premise of the organization is to encourage less driving, not by discouraging driving per se, but by engaging people in experimenting with getting around without a car. The group issues their licenses online and at eco-festivals, street fairs, schools, transportation conferences and other events. The license is much more than a fun gimmick: It represents a pledge based on goals set by the individual Undriver, recognizing that we all have different transportation needs and resources and a strong desire to feel in control of our own mobility.

Want to know more?  Check out one of the many testimonials of Undrivers posted on YouTube.

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We couldn’t put a bow on 2010 until we’d thanked those who contributed to the cause of sustainable transportation and smart growth last year and shaken our fist at those who’d done their darnedest for sprawl and highways. Check out our first two installments of national, state and local Streetsie winners. Here are our parting thoughts and your final votes. Then we can really move into 2011.

Ray LaHood stands on a table to thank bicyclists for working with him to reduce car dependency. Photo: Jonathan Maus

Happiest Occasion: 2010 did have its winning moments. It’s hard to debate that LaHood’s “Tabletop Speech” at the Bike Summit in March was one of the best – along with his subsequent declaration that “this is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.” It still gives me chills.

LaHood literally jumped on a table in front of hundreds of cyclists and said that people around the country “want out of their cars; they want out of congestion; they want to live in livable neighborhoods.” And then he thanked the cyclists for hanging in there with the DOT as it transitions to being an engine of sustainability. “I’m very, very grateful!” Nearly 40 percent of Streetsblog readers agreed that this was the highlight of the year.

Good stuff, indeed. And we have LaHood to thank for some of the other bright spots last year, like two rounds of TIGER grants, providing over $2 billion to states for innovative transportation projects.

Some a-ha moments at the federal level won us over. For one, the feds are taking big strides on bringing health and environmental impacts, as well as performance metrics, into consideration when they make grants (instead of just looking at costs). And they’re realizing that transportation reform is health reform – Michelle Obama’s obesity task force even made the connection between active transportation options and healthy kids. Federal funding of bike/ped projects dipped from 2009’s all time high, but it’s still at impressive levels.

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The cheerful come-ons seem more cheesy than sleazy — “Looking for a New Way to Borrow?” “Apply Now-Get Cash Today!” “Go From $0 to Cash in Less Than an Hour” — but these are not the friendly offers of local diversified banks. They are the insidious pitches of companies that do one thing very well: make car title loans to Americans desperate for cash.

Car-dependent transportation systems create the perfect environment for car title lenders to feed off low-income Americans.

These highly specialized lenders do a gangbuster business, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in loan payments annually. Still, the no-savings-just-loans outfits are little known to most middle- and upper-income families. That’s because their business model entails opening tens of thousands of storefronts in poorer neighborhoods, and throwing up websites online, to target families who need cash but whose only significant asset is a car, often a high-mileage beater. They sell their customers high interest rate loans against some portion of the value of their cars, usually without a credit or income check. And they make those loans at unconscionable rates that can hit 600 percent on an annual basis.

Hard to believe, but it gets worse. When borrowers default, these companies swoop in and “foreclose” on their cars. This is a simple and speedy process because, before handing over the cash, they take both the car’s title and duplicate keys and sometimes install a tracking device on the vehicle. Repossessions can be done in terrifying or violent ways, as the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has documented [PDF]. But even when the repossessions are done peacefully, they leave the car’s now former owner with the sudden and daunting challenge of getting to work on time — or getting to work at all — in a transit-poor community. A car title loan victim can quickly find his or her job repossessed along with the car.

In an America that is so car dependent — 50 percent of us have no public transit option to get to work — and an America with plenty of people struggling to make ends meet with or without a job, it’s a brilliant, if despicable business model.

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