- FHWA projects light-duty vehicle travel (VMT) will grow just 0.4% per year through 2050—a sharp slowdown from the 2.0% annual growth seen from 1989 to 2019.
- Truck travel is expected to grow much faster than passenger driving: 1.9% per year for single-unit trucks and 1.1% for combination trucks, versus 0.4% for light-duty vehicles.
- FHWA's baseline forecast assumes gasoline prices average $2.85 per gallon (2017 dollars) across the entire 2019–2050 period, stabilizing by the mid-2030s after the 2022 peak.
- Under FHWA's three scenarios, 31-year light-duty VMT growth ranges from 0.3% (pessimistic) to 0.6% (optimistic) per year—a real, disclosed range, not a single point estimate.
01 Introduction
Americans currently drive about 3.29 trillion miles a year. The Federal Highway Administration doesn't just track how much driving happens today—it publishes an official long-term forecast of how that's expected to change, out to 2050. This article is built entirely from FHWA's own Spring 2024 forecast document, including the economic assumptions behind it and the full range of scenarios FHWA itself discloses, not a single cherry-picked number.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," Office of Highway Policy Information, June 2024The forecast is a projection, not a certainty—FHWA is explicit that unexpected shocks (recessions, pandemics) have repeatedly upended past VMT forecasts, and it says so directly in its own methodology. We present the baseline case alongside FHWA's own optimistic and pessimistic alternatives so the uncertainty is visible, not hidden.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," p.5-602 The Baseline Forecast Through 2050
FHWA's forecasting model, developed with Volpe (the U.S. DOT's National Transportation Systems Center), uses 2019 as its base year—2020's pandemic-driven 12% drop in light-duty VMT (355 billion miles, four times larger than the biggest one-year drop during the 2008 recession) made it an unworkable starting point for a long-run trend.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," p.4| Vehicle Class | 2019–2040 (21-yr) | 2019–2050 (31-yr) |
|---|---|---|
| Light-Duty Vehicles | 0.5%/yr | 0.4%/yr |
| Single-Unit Trucks | 2.1%/yr | 1.9%/yr |
| Combination Trucks | 1.3%/yr | 1.1%/yr |
| Total (all classes) | 0.6%/yr | 0.5%/yr |
Light-duty vehicles—cars, SUVs, and pickups used for personal travel—are by far the largest share of total VMT, so the overall total tracks close to the light-duty rate despite trucks growing faster in percentage terms.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," p.9Estimate your vehicle's driving cost using official EPA fuel economy data.
Use the Calculator03 Three Scenarios: Optimistic, Baseline, Pessimistic
FHWA doesn't publish a single forecast—it builds three, using alternative long-term economic outlooks (GDP, income, and energy prices) from S&P Global Market Intelligence, then models how each economic path would affect driving.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," p.5–6| Vehicle Class | Pessimistic | Baseline | Optimistic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Light-Duty Vehicles | 0.3%/yr | 0.4%/yr | 0.6%/yr |
| Single-Unit Trucks | 1.4%/yr | 1.9%/yr | 2.6%/yr |
| Combination Trucks | 1.0%/yr | 1.1%/yr | 1.3%/yr |
| Total (all classes) | 0.4%/yr | 0.5%/yr | 0.8%/yr |
The underlying economic assumptions driving this range are explicit: real GDP growth of 1.2% (pessimistic) to 2.2% (optimistic) per year against a 1.7% baseline, and real disposable income per capita growth of 1.4% to 2.0% against a 1.9% baseline.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," p.6–804 Why Growth Is Slowing
The forecast slowdown traces to two underlying demographic shifts. U.S. population growth is projected to average just 0.3% per year through 2050, down from 1.0% per year from 1989 to 2019—a full percentage point of deceleration that alone accounts for much of the VMT slowdown, since population growth has historically been the single biggest driver of total driving.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," Table 2, citing U.S. Census Bureau long-term population projectionsRising income has a genuine dual effect that FHWA's model builds in explicitly: higher income increases demand for travel (more spending on activities outside the home), but it also raises the effective cost of time spent driving, which dampens travel demand. The model's 0.4%/year light-duty forecast already nets these two offsetting effects against each other.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," footnote 805 The Gas Price Assumption Behind the Forecast
FHWA's baseline assumes real (inflation-adjusted) gasoline prices average $2.85 per gallon in 2017 dollars across the full 2019–2050 window, with prices stabilizing by the mid-2030s after the 2022 peak. Real diesel prices are assumed higher, averaging about $3.23 per gallon over the same period. For the nominal-dollar year-by-year history behind that 2022 peak, see gas prices by year, 1950 to 2025.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," p.3–4, Figure 1Under the optimistic scenario, real gas prices are actually projected to decrease slightly (−0.1%/year); under the pessimistic scenario, they rise faster (+0.5%/year) than the +0.3%/year baseline. Higher assumed gas prices go hand-in-hand with lower assumed VMT growth in FHWA's pessimistic case—consistent with the idea that more expensive driving means somewhat less of it, all else equal.
Federal Highway Administration, "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024," p.7–8, Figure 4Estimate your vehicle's driving cost using official EPA fuel economy data.
Use the Calculator06 Data Sources
Every figure in this article comes from a single U.S. government forecast document and its underlying economic inputs. No proprietary, estimated, or third-party projections were used.
- Federal Highway Administration. "FHWA Forecasts of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT): Spring 2024." Office of Highway Policy Information, June 2024. fhwa.dot.gov
- Volpe, National Transportation Systems Center (U.S. DOT). VMT forecasting model development and technical assistance.
- S&P Global Market Intelligence. Spring 2024 long-term economic outlook (GDP, population, disposable income, energy prices), used as the economic input to FHWA's VMT model.
- U.S. Census Bureau. Long-term population projections, underlying the S&P Global population forecast.