trend

Growth in traffic can no longer be assured many places in the US. The San Francisco Bay area is an example. We've gone through ten years of the traffic data. Five of the seven Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) bridges have been seeing traffic recently below a peak year. Overall the seven bridges total traffic is down 3.8% on the peak back in 2004.

Statisticians at the Federal Highways' Policy Information office say the latest data from 4,000 traffic counters around the country show continuing decline in traffic this year but at a lesser rate than the decline of last year.  Their 12 month moving average shows declines of around  a tenth of a percent (one thousandth) per month the past several months - about a third of the average rate of fall last year.