Travel Demand

Over the next 22 years, rising population and jobs will lead to additional vehicles, trips and congestion on the region’s transportation system. By analyzing the various forces affecting travel demand, such as rising population and employment, we can see if and how the plan is capable of dealing with that demand.

Virtually all travel demand indicators are rising, such as vehicle miles of travel (VMT), which is a measure of how much people drive, and transit work trips.

Transit work trips are forecast to increase by 31% as an increasing number of people are expected to use transit to commute to work. The result of this will inevitably be more crowding on the Metrorail system, since the ability of the transit system to expand its capacity is limited by funding constraints.

Detailed travel demand forecast information is available in a table, viewable here.

The road network will also experience a gap between forecasted demand and additional capacity. Given funding constraints, lane miles are only expected to increase 13%, while VMT is expected to rise 23%, resulting in a 41% rise in lane miles of congestion. Nearly all of this increased congestion will occur in the suburbs, with the inner suburbs experiencing the worst congestion in the region. However, it is the outer suburbs that will experience the most dramatic increase in congestion, with a more than 100% increase in lane miles of congestion by 2030.