Vehicle Miles Travelled

Why should bicyclists focus on Vehicle Miles Travelled?

Because of our speed- average less that 20 mph we can cover much less of the city than a car average speed 60 mph. Traveling five or ten miles in a a day is within the reach of most people. Thus cities that place all the landuse within 2.5 miles to 5 miles of a bicyclist are useful. Cities like Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Chicago have high bicycle populations because of the accessibility of travel destination in a small area.

Our bicycle speeds are still ten times faster than a pedestrian uses to cover a city. Cities designed around pedestrian and bicycle speeds are accessible by fossil fuel free transportation modes. Such cities are called slow cities. And ideally a slow city is based on the mobility speeds of a child.

Fast cities on the other hand take away the mobility choice of travelling fossil free. The result is that people have to drive for many of their trips- dropping the kids of at school, going to the movies, picking up the groceries, going to work. And with driving comes crowding, since every car is zonned for 7 spots at the end of these trips, and congestion, pollution and hostility to fossil fuels free modes of mobility which are now seen as impediments to traffic. These trips measured in Vehicle Miles Travelled or VMT add up.

MTC data shows that in the Bay Area
http://www.mtc.ca.gov/maps_and_data/datamart/stats/vmt.htm

in 1990 we covered 107,707,600/238712 VMT per day which is equal to 450 round trips to the moon (RTM) each day. An RTM is 238712 miles.

In 2007 data our VMT data of 154,172,000 equaled about 650 RTM

In 2030 our VMT of 202,756,400 will equal 850 RTM

San Mateo is about 20% of these trips. To accommodate all these RTMs engineers take away space from impediments. Thus bike and pedestrian infrastructure for access decrease.