Drivers in the Salt Lake metro are putting on far more miles now than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why it matters: Driving plummeted during the pandemic as people sought to “stop the spread,” offering cities a unique chance to get a handle on transportation-related emissions — but we didn’t seize the moment.
- The lost opportunity is especially painful along the Wasatch front, an area where people with health problems are told to stay indoors and schools cancel recess to protect children on poor air quality days .
Driving the news: Average daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita increased 20.14% in the Salt Lake metro from spring 2019 to this year, per a new report from StreetLight Data, a transportation analytics firm.
- Other Utah metros were up even more, with a 21.42% rise in Ogden-Clearfield and a whopping 32.7% in Provo-Orem — the sixth-sharpest rise of the nation’s 100 largest metros.
Zoom out: Nationally, per-capita VMT rose 12.3% across the those 100 metro areas.