Does Constant Driving Really Make Our Country Richer? (Todd Litman) - 6:30:25, 3.04 PM

8:18PM Jun 30, 2025

Speakers:

Keywords:

Mobility productivity paradox

vehicle miles traveled

economic productivity

transportation discourse

GDP correlation

accessibility indicators

chauffeuring burdens

walkable neighborhoods

automobile dependency

economic opportunity

multi-modal transportation

public transit

affordable housing

environmental sustainability

transportation planning.

Kea, Hey guys, welcome to the break. I'm Kea Wilson, so we've probably all heard this argument that the soul of America's economy is based on the fact that we all love to drive, right? The narrative goes basically that cars are the thing that connects us to far flung jobs and schools and amazing opportunities we could never reach on foot, bike or bus alone. They're the thing that help us buy more stuff every time we go to the store and spend more on fuel and parts and everything else along the way to keep our cars running, and the faster that we collectively can keep those cars moving by expanding highways, theoretically, the more money we'll all be able to make and then be able to spend at Good old fashioned American businesses. And at one point in American history, sure, this was kind of true. Being able to travel further, faster and on our own schedules did make America more prosperous, at least, compared to our horse and wagon days. But the data shows that a few decades ago, something changed in that calculus and America's car powered productivity revolution seemingly stalled out today in honor of the Fourth of July weekend that's coming up here, I'm actually sitting down with a Canadian named Todd Litman of the Victoria transport policy institute, who is the author of a New study about something that he calls the mobility productivity paradox, namely, that as transit supply, transit ridership and the share of trips we all take on active modes, goes up, so does our national GDP, at least in developed nations like ours, it's the opposite of What a lot of us would be likely to assume, and getting our fellow Americans to believe it may be the question of our time. So let's unpack how here is my conversation with Todd Litman of the Victoria transport policy institute. How about we just sort of set the stage a little bit. You wrote this fascinating paper, the mobility productivity paradox. What do you mean when you say mobility for one because that is a term with several meanings. And what do you mean when you say productivity? Why is that such a dominant and important word in our transportation discourse?

Sure. So mobility, you know, by definition, means physical movement. And in practice, most of what I'm actually analyzing is vehicle mobility. That is, most of my studies are measuring VMT, vehicle miles traveled, or the Canadian equivalent, vehicle kilometers traveled, or automobile mode share in general. What I'm measuring is, when I say mobility, it's how much people

drive. And then when we say productivity, what do we mean? Because I think when I think of productivity, I think of something different than what economists think of so you tell me how you're defining those terms productivity,

technically, it means the amount of measurable, valuable goods and services that somebody could produce, generally what you see traded in the market. That's the, let's say, The Economist definition, and that means when people produce more stuff that can be sold goods and services, and they're selling it that shows up in measurements of productivity. There are some inherent weaknesses in that. The one that you know, I'm certainly aware of, is that a productivity doesn't measure, for example, if you cook your own meal, that doesn't show up. But if you go to a restaurant and buy a meal, that shows up as productivity. And you can think of that if you hire a nanny, then parenting shows up as productivity, but if you take care of your own children, it doesn't. So using productivity is a metric. You know, I certainly there are lots of reasons to criticize that basic idea, it makes expensive lifestyle seem desirable, so, and this is extremely pertinent to our discussion now, is that if somebody goes from an affordable form of transportation, mainly walking and bicycling, and not having to work as hard, so, So maybe you only work eight hours a day because you're leading a low cost lifestyle, or maybe you're even working part time and being able to support a family satisfy your needs with four hours of paid work a day, and that gives you lots of time to be a good parent, or lots of time to be a. To work on your art or do other things you love. You know, if you measure productivity, the more expensive form of transportation actually looks good, because now people are spending much more money. We're working longer hours and spending more money on more goods and services. And so your national productivity looks like it's it's increasing, because the cost of living has just gone up. I'm the first to admit or first to point out that the connection between productivity or income and happiness is actually kind of imperfect.

So Okay, let's take a big step back to talk about this study again. So even given these two kind of problematic metrics, right, like mobility as the amount that people drive, productivity, as the amount that people buy and spend money, you know, disregarding all the other kinds of productivity and even kind of valid economic development goals that we might look at and metricize, what kind of relationship did you find? Because I think a lot of people, and certainly a lot of traffic engineers, would assume that, yeah, Americans driving long distances, spending a ton of money on gas, buying big cart fulls of stuff at the big box store working all the time would be pretty good for productivity. Is that what you found

very consistently, the indicators for mobility, that is how much people drive, including things like roadway supply and parking supply and per capita VMT and automobile mode share are negatively, consistently negatively associated with with GDP, with per capita GDP and the indicators of accessibility, that is, the indicators of people being able to get to what they want, jobs and shopping and friends and restaurants and bars, those are positively associated things like density and non auto mode shares are consistent, and fuel prices are consistently, positively associated with these GDP indicators. So that is really interesting because it contradicts the dominant model, which assumes that the more people driving, the faster you can drive, the more cars people own, the better for the economy. The data that I'm finding shows the opposite, and so it emphasizes a point that I think you'll understand, and that is economic productivity thrive. Our economic development goals are best achieved by making our transportation system more efficient so you can get what you want with less driving, not more driving. And that's that's boils it down,

yeah, I want to talk more about the reasons why, and sort of unpack them, because you have a great table in here. Table in here. But there was one pattern that you isolated that I found really interesting, which is, it sounds like up until the turn of the millennium, those two things were correlated, but then something happened around the 21st Century. Could you help me kind of understand what happened? Why did we hit a ceiling between this tight correlation with mobility and productivity? What changed around the turn of the millennium?

Well, there are a couple of ways I can phrase this. The technical term is declining marginal benefit. Let's say there are you've got a household of four adults, you know, it's the 1920s and you buy one car, and that car is going to be used for the most important trips. Let's say you're a farm family, and you buy a truck, and you're going to use that truck, suddenly, your ability to sell vegetables at the farmers market has gone way up compared with the old days when you went to the farmer's market with a horse and wagon, you know, getting that model T truck really enhanced your productivity. And then over time, you know, 1940s or 50s. Now your family has two cars. You know, you're, you've got your truck for work, but, but now you're, you've got a second car. But 1970s now, that family with four adults now you've got three cars, and by the turn of the century, you had a car for everybody. And because you and all your neighbors are now driving to Walmarts, you're addicted to this thing called driving. A simple way to phrase it is just saturation, but on a system wide basis, is everybody gets more cars. Every or most households in your neighborhood get more cars and drive more now you're also getting those systematic effects. So the quality of sidewalks and walking goes down, and the safety of bicycling goes down because there's all that driving going on. And the quality of public transit services plummets because people, middle class people, are no longer using transit. So the transit system is getting less ridership, less revenue and less public support, what we call a doom cycle. And this has been going on for the last 50 years. And each of those steps, each of those systematic shifts, can have very significant negative impacts on productivity. I'll just give you one example. One of the things that I'm I'm certainly aware of, and I think a lot of people are aware of, except that it is almost never mentioned in transportation planning, and that is increasing chauffeuring burdens. You know, we could transport ourselves back in time, 1950s neighborhoods were built basically around an elementary school, so almost the vast majority of kids walked or biked to school, and it was therefore quite safe to walk and bike to school, because everybody else, all your neighbors, were doing it. And then, you know, we evolved toward more sprawl and automobile dependency. Moms and dads don't feel safe allowing kids to walk to school or to friend's house or to parks. I know that there's this whole thing about Stranger danger, but the truth is, Stranger Danger risk is insignificant compared with traffic risk far, far greater risk. So anyway, now moms and dads are driving kids to destinations that are perfectly reasonable walking and biking distance, and for some trips where they could perfectly reasonably use public transit if it was convenient, but neighborhoods built without sidewalks and why streets that feel unsafe, and the collapse of public transit service and the fact that there are so few other kids walking and biking in the neighborhood now moms and dad are having to chauffeur, and it turns out in some of the travel surveys show that 15% up to 15% of peak period trips are somebody chauffeuring a non driver. That is a huge inefficiency, and a lot of families now feel like they have to buy that second car. You know, they will own more cars and spend lots more money and spend lots more time, because walking and bicycling and public transit, non auto modes have become unacceptable, become uncomfortable and more dangerous and inconvenient. Okay. Think about the product, the effect that that has on household budgets and on parents the driver's time, suddenly you now have a huge burden. A typical parent easily be spending hours per week chauffeuring little kids around for trips where they would actually prefer to walk or bike if they have that freedom. The point is that this really does show up as moms and dads having less flexibility for work. So you know, they'll say, oh, yeah, I can't make that meeting because I have to chauffeur my 14 year old kid to a soccer practice or something like that so they they're less productive. There is a huge vocabulary in the transportation world to measure and talk about the costs of traffic congestion, and there is almost zero vocabulary or cost models, or, you know, economic impact models for evaluating chauffeuring burdens, although my research suggests that chauffeuring burdens are actually quite a bit bigger than congestion delay costs when you take them into account,

definitely. I mean, a thing that I want to make sure we get out ahead of is basically, I want to understand how your research and research like it can help us sort of defeat What about ism in the way we talk about transportation, because I can see someone who isn't knee deep in the research like you saying, Okay, well, my kid can't walk to his neighborhood school, and I have to drive him across town now, but that means that I can take him to the excellent private school across town instead of the neighborhood school. That's kind of crappy, and that's a price I'm willing to pay. Or, you know, yeah, I have to commute 45 minutes to work, but the job that I have 45 minutes away pays way better, something like that. There's a narrative within automobility that all of this congestion, all of this sitting in traffic all day, spending, you know, a 30 year household budget on a small fleet of cars for everyone who happens to be able to drive in your household is, on balance, worth it, even though it doesn't seem like it is like, how does your data help counter those. Sorts of narratives on the aggregate scale, and how can we operationalize thinking about it in a different

way? Yeah, well, it is challenging, because most of us are inundated by car advertising and other media messages that normalize driving and make a non auto travel a little bit suspect. Okay, I get that. I mean, the average person is seeing dozens of these ads a week, and they are, you know, there's a dishonesty in them. And no, no question about that. However, I think an awful lot of people, when we when we describe the alternative. It does resonate when we talk about living in a walkable neighborhood. The consumer surveys. You know, the National Association realtors, every year or two, does a survey of housing and neighborhood preference, housing, transportation and neighborhood preferences. And over time, an increasing portion of the respondents say that they would prefer a walk living in a walkable neighborhood over automobile dependent sprawl. It, of course, depends on how you frame it. If you ask people, would you rather live in a single family house or an apartment or a multi family house? 80 90% of people will say, Oh, yeah, I want the single family. But if you present a realistic trade off, and you say, would you rather live in a single family house where you're going to have to spend a lot more time driving and a lot more money on cars? Or would you choose, let's say, a test house, a townhouse or a more compact housing type, if it allowed you to live in a walkable neighborhood where you felt safe and your kids felt safe walking to school, at least half, probably more than half of households would say they want the walkable neighborhoods, and especially if you bring in what you could call social status. So in the past, the assumption was cities were only for extremely poor, extremely rich people and middle class people all wanted to move to the suburbs, and the excuse often given is better schools. So if you said, would you want to live in a walkable neighborhood that happens to be very safe and have good schools and nice parks and other services. I think a majority of people would prefer that. I think we need to paint a word picture or ask people what they what they really like. Okay, so that brings us to the next step, if you want to address the pro automobile narrative, I think the biggest hook is affordability and economic opportunity?

Yeah, you and I have talked about this a little bit, actually, in the past. It's, it's really, you really helped me understand why we need to be leading with affordability and not with some of the things that might be very dear to us if we identify as progressives, like climate and things like that, because where people really vote at the end of the day is with their wallets, and you do a beautiful job of talking about that. And I think by injecting this conversation about aggregate productivity of whole countries into it, you really broaden that conversation. Because it's very easy for us, on an individual level, to say, you know, well, I don't love that. I don't live in a walkable place, but you know, if I choose to live out here, then I am, I can still drive to work 50 miles away every day, and I'll be fine. But when you look at it, at the aggregate, and when you look at the way that whole country's GDP kind of hits a ceiling at a certain point with car dependency, it really is a powerful picture. And I just think you did a really beautiful job of explaining that in this particular paper, I want to recognize that we're coming to the top of our time. Unfortunately, so is there anything else about the mobility, productivity paradox that you want to make sure that you leave an advocacy focused audience with? What can they do about this? What do you want them to do to move the needle and change the way that their neighbors think and their decision makers think around how productivity works relative to our transportation culture,

right? Well, true sustainability is not just environmental sustainability. It's about balancing economic, social and environmental goals, and this is the perfect opportunity to show that in many, many situations, multi modal transportation planning TDM incentives like efficient parking pricing and higher fuel taxes and road pricing and commute trip production programs and smart growth development policies do as much to increase economic productivity and economic opportunity as anything else. So just as an example there, there is research showing that if you're a disadvantaged household, you know you're you're a struggling worker. Didn't have a car, and now you're given a car, you you have better access to. Jobs, and you, on average, earn a couple $1,000 a year more. This is this is real survey research, but it costs that household more than $4,000 to own and operate that car, plus that household is now exposed to more chance of a car crash, a vehicle failure, a sudden financial crisis, a moving violation that could easily snowball into being thrown in jail. I don't blame the laws. I blame automobile dependency, the fact that for anybody that earns a lower moderate income is far better off in many ways, affordability and health and economic resilience by having good non auto options, so even if they own a car, when their car breaks down, or they they get sick and or whatever, can't drive, lose their driver's license, that they can still easily get to work and and shop at affordable stores. I do think that that's our message, is that we have, as we have solutions that even the most business oriented conservative people should support. It's just it's up to us to provide the research, because it contradicts the basic assumptions that we we've been inundated with. So so it's going to be up to us to take those graphs that I've created and present them at the time and place, when we have an opportunity to demonstrate that, yeah, making a more walkable downtown in your small town, it's not just good good for your health and for your environment and for poor People, but it is also the businesses in that area are going to do much better than if you were to just spend all that land and all that money.

Okay, that's our show. Thank you so much. Again. To my guest, Todd Lipman of the Victoria transport policy institute, I will include a link to his paper the mobility productivity paradox in the show notes, there's some really handy graphs and tables in there that I would encourage you to take a look at as you want to dig deeper on this. It really is a fundamental question about how to move this movement forward, and it's worth a read if you would like to keep this podcast going. You can do that by giving us some support. You can make a tax deductible contribution to our parent company, streets blog usa@usa.streetsblog.org, you can leave us a positive review on Apple Music, Spotify anywhere else that you listen, or just tell a friend to check out the show. The break is a production of streets blog USA. Our theme music is eggshells by Christina Johnson. I am your host and editor. Kea Wilson, and before I let you go, same question as always, what is one thing you have done today to help end universal car dependency? Let me know. Kea.