Transportation agencies continue to apply predict-and-provide planning which simply extrapolates past trends to predict future needs. It’s time to apply decide-and-provide planning to better achieve community goals. The U.S. Department of Transportation just released its latest Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) Forecast which predicts that vehicle travel will grow between 0.4 percent and 0.8 percent annually between now and 2050, depending on economic growth rates. This is bad planning.
These forecasts simply extrapolate past trends; they assume that if vehicle travel grew at a certain rate in the past it will continue at that rate into the future, ignoring underlying factors that may affect travel activity. In particular, the DOT forecast assumes that vehicle travel always increases with economic productivity although recent trends indicate decoupling, and it assumes that per capita vehicle travel will grow although it actually peaked in 2004, as illustrated below. Many current trends – aging population, rising travel costs, increased urbanization, new technologies (telework and e-bikes), increasing health and environmental concerns, plus changing consumer preferences – are likely to suppress future vehicle travel growth if we let them; the DOT forecast ignores that possibility.
https://www.planetizen.com/blogs/131876-risks-self-fulfilling-travel-forecasts