Moneybox

How the Department of Transportation Screws Up Traffic Forecasts

Here’s an amazing chart from Eric Sundquist at the State Smart Transportation Initiative (via Clark Williams-Derry and Andrew Gelman) about how Department of Transportation forecasters have dealt with the much-discussed decline in driving in America:

We see that as VMT (vehicle-miles traveled) growth slowed, stalled out, and then went into decline, the DOT has consistently just forecast that it’s on the verge of taking off again.