Talking Headways Short: The Real News About America’s Driving Habits

11:24 AM EDT on September 24, 2014

Consider this a bonus track. A deleted scene at the end of your DVD. Extra footage.

Or, consider it what it is: A short podcast episode Jeff and I recorded two and a half weeks ago that never got edited because I went to Pro-Walk Pro-Bike and he went to Rail~Volution and we recorded (and actually posted) a podcast in between and basically, life got in the way.

But better late than never, right? Here is a Talking Headways short in which we discuss the Federal Highway Administration's recent (er, not so recent anymore) announcement that Americans are driving more than any time since 2008 and so we'd better spend lots more on highways. Here are two quick visuals to help you understand just one reason we thought their reasoning was flawed:

Despite the rhetoric, FHWA's own charts show that driving is hardly bouncing back to peak levels. Image: ##http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/14juntvt/figure1.cfm##FHWA##

fred — Even more dramatic: Check out how much per capita vehicle miles traveled has dropped. Image: ##http://research.stlouisfed.org/##St. Louis Fed##

You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear the rest. It's a short one; you can listen to the whole thing while you fold the laundry. And there's something extra-adorable in there as a special prize for putting up with our tardiness.

Jeff will be back soon from Rail~volution and then we'll get to hear all about that, and then we'll be back to normal podcasts on, we hope, a more normal schedule.

You'll be the first to know when that happens if you subscribe to Talking Headways on our RSS feed, Stitcher or iTunes.

Tanya Snyder

Tanya became Streetsblog's Capitol Hill editor in September 2010 after covering Congress for Pacifica Radios Washington bureau and for public radio stations around the country. She lives car-free in a transit-oriented and bike-friendly neighborhood of Washington, DC.

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