Americans drove 2.9 trillion miles in 2010!

In the DOT's latest "Traffic Volume Trends" report, it's estimated that American drivers collectively logged over 2.9 trillion miles in their vehicles last year. That's an 0.7 percent increase—20.5 billions more miles—than the previous year and marks the most vehicle miles traveled since 2007.

Think about that for a moment.  The cost as born by users, that's you and me, is about $0.65/mile.  That makes the user born use cost about $1.9 trillion!

But that's just the user born direct cost.  The roads we drove on have to be built and maintained.  The actual cost of building a mile of road varies greatly but for interstates is somewhere between $1 million per mile and $20 million per mile!  There are about 2,734,102 miles of paved road in the US.  Of course local roads do not cost as much as interstates but some interstates cost much more than others.  The actual average cost of a mile of road must be a few hundred thousand dollars per mile.  That makes the capital cost of the roads something around $500 billion or so.

Roads have to be maintained and periodically replaced.  The average lifetime of a road varies considerably but is something on the order of 15 to 20 years.  That makes the yearly cost of the road system around $25 billion or so.

Common Sense notes that the real cost of automobile transportation is much much more than is commonly understood.  Surely there must be a better way.