Cars: Necessity or Luxury? Get Real, A Definite Necessity!

So get a horse?
The Antiplanner :: Cars: Necessity or Luxury? :: http://ti.org/antiplanner

June 13, 2011 (full short post listed)

Some people are chortling over a recent Pew survey that finds the share of Americans who think that cars are a “necessity” is the lowest since pollsters started asking the question in 1973. Perhaps, some are suggesting, that’s because young people aren’t driving as much as older Americans, so we shouldn’t invest much more in highways.

Another interpretation of the numbers is that more people think they should tell pollsters that they don’t need cars as much as they used to. The Antiplanner prefers to rely on revealed preferences rather than survey data. Here are a couple of revealed preferences.

Table B25044 of the 2009 American Community Survey indicates that 113 million out of 123 million American households–that’s 91.1 percent–have at least one vehicle available. Despite the recession, this is up from 105 out of 126 million households (89.7 percent) in the 2000 census (see table H44, summary file 3 orthis brief).

Table B08301 of the 2009 American Community Survey found that 105.5 million out of 138.6 million workers (76.1 percent) usually drive alone to work. That’s up from 97.1 million out of 128.3 million (75.7 percent) in 2000 (see table PCT55, summary file 3 or this brief). The share of people carpooling declined, but most of the slack was taken up by an increase in people working at home. Transit’s share increased from 4.6 to 5.0 percent, while walking and cycling increased from 3.3 to 3.5 percent.

As the Antiplanner’s favorite demographer, Wendell Cox, points out, census data can be deceiving because the census question is “how did you usually get to work last week?” The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), however, asks how people actually got to work on a specific day. It turns out people who say they usually drive alone almost always do drive alone, but people who say they usually take transit often take other modes. The 2009 NHTS found that only 3.7 percent of commuters actually take transit on any given workday. This is unchanged from the 2001 NHTS, which also found that 3.7 percent of commuters take transit on any given workday (see page 1-19 of this report).

So fewer people may say they they regard cars as a necessity (though still more than any other piece of technology in Pew’s survey). But their reveal preferences show that more households have vehicles and more people are driving those vehicles. Yes, per capita driving may be down, but that’s more due to the recession and high fuel prices than anything else.

Demographically, the United States has an aging population and an increasing share of retirees. So many transportation experts believe per capita driving is not likely to increase as fast in the future as it has in the past. But the population is growing, there are many congested roads out there, and as cars get more automated there is likely to be a surge in driving. Which all means there is good reason to think that some new roads (paid for, of course, entirely out of user fees) will make sense.