An official website of the United States government.
Travel in the United States Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, the associated policy interventions such as stay-at-home orders, and the associated economic recession all had profound influences on how much Americans traveled and how they traveled in 2020.
Data from sources such as vehicle counts and cell phone records have been used to estimate the overall magnitude of the change in travel at the national and state levels, however, little information is available regarding changes in the composition of travel (e.g., characteristics of road users; mode and purpose of travel). The current study aims to quantify changes in monthly travel from July 2019 through December 2020 using data from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety’s New American Driving Survey, which interviews a sample of U.S. residents every day to collect information about their travel on the previous day. This enables examination of changes in travel in relation to the pandemic not only overall but in relation to the characteristics of the travelers and their trips.
Read the full study here.