FHWA data shows U.S. driving sets a record for October 2015

Updated Jan 11, 2016

highway traffic

Data from the Federal Highway Administration’s Traffic Volume Trends report shows a record level of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for October 2015 at 273.5 billion miles.

That is the highest number of miles driven in any October on record and brings the yearly total for 2015 through that month to 2.63 trillion miles.

The report also includes seasonally adjusted VMT produced by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That figure, which “evens out seasonal variation in travel” to allow comparisons to any month in any year, was 264.2 billion miles. That’s almost identical to the seasonally adjusted figures for September 2015.

All five of the reporting regions of the country increased total miles, the 13-state West region had the highest VMT at 62 billion, while the Northeast had the lowest VMT at 38.4 billion.

Hawaii had the highest increase among individual states at 9.4 percent compared to October 2014. California was second at 6.5 percent, followed by Florida at 5 percent. North Dakota had the largest decrease in VMT, with a 4.9 percent drop.

The October 2015 report, as well as all previous reports documenting figures from 5,000 continuous count states across the country, is available here.