Racking Up the Miles
Americans took the road more last year, data shows.
The 2023 total miles traveled surpassed that of 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.
IMAGE: Pexels/Alessandro Aviles
U.S. drivers clocked more miles on the road than ever last year.
Americans accumulated about 3.264 trillion miles of automotive travel, up a tad over 2%, or 67.5 billion miles, according to the Federal Highway Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, in its Traffic Volume Trends report.
That’s even though many people are working remotely or under hybrid arrangements lingering from the pandemic lockdown days. In fact, the annual total surpassed that of 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, when miles traveled totaled about 3.262 trillion.
2020, the year the pandemic began in the West, miles traveled fell to the lowest since 2003 to 2.903 trillion miles.
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