U.S. Residents Rely on Individual Motorization for Trips

According to the most recent edition of the National Household Travel Survey conducted irregularly by the Federal Highway Association, approximately nine out of ten person trips in the United States were undertaken with either a car, an SUV, a pickup truck or a van in 2022. Compared to the previous survey from 2017, walking played a significantly less important role, with its share in total person trips dropping by 3.6 percent to 6.9 percent.

The study of more than 7,000 randomly sampled U.S. households surveyed between January 2022 and January 2023 also shows that other forms of individual transport were even more negligible. Overall, they amounted to a 1.2 percent share in all person trips, defined as a journey from one address to another by one individual. Bicycles, the only relevant non-motorized transportation mode employed by the U.S. residents surveyed, had a share of 0.9 percent.

Person trips conducted via public or commuter buses also had a 0.9 percent share in all person trips undertaken by the survey respondents, which puts taking a bus in first rank regarding usage intensity of public transit. This can be explained by the survey being focused on the United States as a whole and not only metro areas, where it would be more likely to have access to a well-connected rail-based public transit system. 0.4 percent of all person trips fell in this category, with respondents saying they used either a subway or elevated rail, while commuter trains had a person trip share of 0.1 percent.