Vehicle Miles Traveled in March 2021 was up 19% over March 2020. That big gain is not surprising, since March 2020 was the first lockdown month last year when VMT was down 19%. To measure the full recovery in VMT, we should also go back to March 2019 and compare that month too. We are still down 3.5% compared to 2019, so traffic hasn’t fully recovered.

As the chart shows, while March 2021 shows a strong rebound over last year, we haven’t fully reached the levels of pre-Covid. This year, VMT was 262,957 million miles, while in March 2019 it was 272,537 million miles. In fact, you need to go back to 2015 to see similar levels. (All the numbers in this report come from the Federal Highway Administration, Office of Highway Policy Information.)