The decline in automobile travel means fewer trips to the gasoline pump.
In a recent survey by ValuePenguin, almost one third of respondents said they're driving every day, down from 50% pre-pandemic. Respondents who fill up their vehicle gas tanks every week dropped by 26% in August, versus pre-pandemic levels.
Reduced commuting and shopping journeys could result in up to 270 billion fewer vehicle miles traveled (VMT) each year in the US. (Source: KPMG International report) . Given that airline boarding is still down about 70%, I assume some people will be driving for vacations, or visits, rather than flying.
But overall, I believe the changes in commuting and e-commerce have permanently accelerated trends already in progress. And the total demand for gasoline has had a permanent reduction ... long before the roads were filled up with electric vehicles.
DETAILS:
The reduction of motor vehicles on US highways is very obvious. I take at least one short drive every day to get out of the house during the COVID nightmare. Normally busy roads in my county (with over 1 million people) rarely have more than light traffic. Normally, on a workday, at 5pm it's difficult to get out of my subdivision -- there will be a half mile traffic jam going east. I haven't seen that since February.
61 million Americans have stopped commuting to work due to the virus recession (depression), from a recent ValuePenguin.com survey.
One obvious reason: On Thursday new data showed 27 million Americans were collecting state or federal unemployment benefits. That's down one million from the prior week, and down from the 32 million peak in May, but still huge.
The normally accurate Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unemployment rate is now a very misleading lie, by not including "gig workers" who started receiving federal benefits this year, in their headline U3 unemployment number. Mainly because a lot of unemployed people in COVID-affected businesses are not looking for work, or are considered to be temporarily employed, with the BLS stretching the definition of "temporarily" to an extreme.
On my blogs there is honesty:
If I assume the number of people receiving unemployment benefits are a good proxy for the real unemployment rate, then that rate is about 17% ... which is in economic depression territory ... but thankfully down from the 20% (32 million) peak in May.
During my drives I see some southeastern Michigan office buildings now have far more parked cars than just one month ago. But other large office buildings, that normally have hundreds of parked cars, have only one or two dozen. Restaurants are not getting much obvious take out business. One exception: I don't stop to buy anything during my drives, except a $3 McDouble burger and fries if I'm hungry. The line of cars at McDonalds is sometimes so long that I don't bother waiting -- they are busy.
ValuePenguin's survey found a large number of drivers are no longer commuting to the office, either working from home, or they lost a job.
About three in 10 people with a motor vehicle said they no longer have a commute due to COVID-19, either because they're working from home (19%), or they have temporarily or permanently lost their jobs (10%).
26% are back to their daily commute, as of August, including essential workers (17%) and those whose employers reopened their offices (9%).
The remainder don't commutes because they either worked from home, or were not working, before the pandemic.
38% of respondents said traffic in their metro areas remains subdued, and 36% said traffic was reduced, but trending back to pre-pandemic levels.
The TomTom high-frequency traffic congestion data for New York City shows traffic levels remain subdued long after their COVID-19 deaths peaked:
