Originally Posted by
Caretaker
No. I read the article and it refers to "driving in the nation's five largest cities" which in the context of the article I take to refer to Canada.
You might care to re-read the article.
It was an unclear sentence, further confused by mention of an Australian researcher or some such.
Regardless, a per capita drop is still a "real" drop. It's just one way of measuring it that in some ways is more meaningful, since it points out trends and personal habits. In addition, real miles driven have dropped in the US, as I said. The article says that US miles are at the same level as in 1998. Since population has increased quite a bit in 13 years, this also implies a per capita drop in the US.
Originally Posted by Globe & Mail
The most detailed picture of the trend comes from the United States, where the distance driven by Americans per capita each year flatlined at the turn of the century and has been dropping for six years. By last spring, Americans were driving the same distance as they had in 1998.
The data are similar in Europe, Australia and Japan. And, although Canada doesn't keep national statistics on individual driving habits, Australian researcher Jeff Kenworthy has found that driving in the nation's five largest cities, combined, declined by 1.7 per cent per capita from 1995 to 2006.