While Metro ridership is reaching new heights, the area’s roads are seeing a drop in wear and tear from drivers, statistics show.
Maryland and Virginia drivers logged between 1 percent and 5 percent fewer miles in January, March and April of 2008 than they did during the same months the year before, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Transportation figures, while the miles for District drivers dropped in January and March.
The agency did not have numbers available for May or June.
“It’s almost like you can take the number of vehicle miles traveled and cut and paste it over the price of gasoline and see a corollary,” AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John Townsend said. “These are habit-breaking, lifestyle-changing prices.”
The number of vehicle miles traveled climbed in all three jurisdictions in February, an aberration Townsend attributed to the unusually warm weather that month.
Nationally, the number of miles traveled has dropped for six months in a row, Department of Transportation officials said last week.
Americans logged nearly 30 billion fewer highway miles between November and April than during the same time the previous year.
So far, the trend is not leading to a drastic drop in demand for spots in parking garages, according to one local company.
“We’ve seen at best a minimum decline, if that” said Daniel Lassiter, a regional manger for Standard Parking Corp., which manages parking facilities in hundreds of cities across the United States and Canada. “We’re aware that ridership for Metro has increased, but we’ve seen very minimal changes.”
Joy Pavelski contributed to this report.
