Road Traffic Falls As Gas Prices Skyrocket

For 20 years now, workers in Palm Beach County, Fla., have been counting cars with sensors at strategic points along the county's 4,000 miles of roads. And as sure as the tide flows in the nearby Atlantic, nearly every year traffic volume has climbed at least 2%. But in 2007 there was a slight decline in the number of vehicles on the roads. And this year, traffic is down 7.5% through March. "We're seeing a very significant change," says county engineer George Webb. "We're having a good time speculating why."

It's not just Palm Beach. Traffic levels are trending downward nationwide. Preliminary figures from the Federal Highway Administration show it falling 1.4% last year. Now, with nationwide gasoline prices having recently passed the inflation-adjusted record of $3.40 a gallon set back in 1981, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is predicting gas consumption will actually fall 0.3% this year. That would be the first annual decline since 1991. Others believe the falloff in consumption is actually steeper than the government's numbers show. "Our canaries out there tell us they are seeing demand drop much more considerably than the fraction the EIA is talking about," says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service, a market research firm in Gaithersburg, Md.

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