John Wetmore Talks to Nerdwallet About Trend Toward Less Driving

Pedestrian pundit John Wetmore spoke with Nerdwallet.com about the ongoing trend of young people driving less, and the impact of this on urban environments and planning.

In the article "The Impact of Fewer Drivers on Cities," Wetmore told the website,

John Z. Wetmore is a firm believer in taking the road less traveled. He produces a television program entitled “Perils for Pedestrians.” His goal is to urge urban planners and local governments to build and maintain more sidewalks and crosswalks, as well as reduce speeding traffic, dangerous intersections and other hazards to cyclists and walkers. 

“The drop in vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) started before the economic downturn, and after several years VMT has not returned to its growth trends of past decades. This should not be surprising,” Wetmore says. “At some point, you have saturated the population with automobiles and hit the maximum mode share for driving. Additionally, people like having choices. As alternatives to driving improve, people will make the appropriate mode choice for each trip, and it will not always be driving.” 

Wetmore believes the big problem is not the drop in VMT, but the failure of transportation planners to respond to it. 

“Roads are typically built for traffic projections going out 20 years in the future,” he tells NerdWallet. “When those projections are based on outdated trends, we spend too much building roads that are too wide for the traffic they will actually see. When we build roads that are too wide, we have less space and fewer dollars for the modes that actually are growing in use, such as walking, bicycling and transit.”