Millennials Vehicle Miles of Travel Compared to Generation X

University Transportation Centers Program2019PDFTech ReportPendyala, Ram M.da Silva, Denise CapassoKhoeini, SaraArizona State University. School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built EnvironmentCenter for Teaching Old Models New Tricks (TOMNET)United States. Department of Transportation. University Transportation Centers (UTC) ProgramCenter for Teaching Old Models New Tricks (TOMNET)United StatesAge groupsAlternatives analysisDemographicsTravel behaviorVehicle miles of travelMillennialsGeneration XCohort analysisAge effectsLongitudinal analysisLifecycle stages69A3551747116Research Report (February 2019 \u2013 February 2020)This project is motivated by a desire to understand and quantify the extent to which millennials are truly different in their activity-travel behavior when compared with Generation X that preceded them. In order to conduct the inter-generational comparison and control for a number of confounding factors in determining the \u201cmillennial difference\u201d, data from the 2001 and 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) is utilized. In computing the sizes of various effects in explaining differences in VMT between the two cohorts, it is found that the socio-economic and demographic effect size is the largest. All other effect sizes are very small; the millennial effect, although statistically significant, is tiny in comparison to the socio-economic and demographic effect size. The isolation of the millennial effect size is, however, not straightforward because the other effects may themselves be influenced by the cohort effect. Nevertheless, the millennial effect appears very small, suggesting that there is no substantial fundamental difference in attitudes, values, and preferences between generations. Changes in the transportation landscape are likely to be driven largely by technological innovation, economics, and public policy rather than by any inter-generational differences.137