Families forsaking second cars

Number of autos on US roadways likely to shrink

Julia and Evan Campbell, a two-car couple in Medford, will soon become a one-vehicle family. The registration on their 13-year-old Ford Ranger expired last month, and to save on insurance, fuel, and fees, they plan to sell the pickup and rely on public transit and their Honda CRV.

"Gas prices have plummeted, but that's definitely not going to last for all eternity," said Julia Campbell, 31.

The number of vehicles on US roads may shrink for the first time since the 2002 recession because of decisions like the Campbells'.

Automakers may sell just 11.7 million cars and trucks in the United States next year, according to GM's estimates, and if last year's scrap rate of 13 million holds, drivers will be pulling cars off the road faster than they're buying them.

"With everything happening, it's very likely the fleet will shrink next year," said George Magliano, an analyst at IHS Global Insight Inc., in Lexington.

The fleet has contracted only nine times in the past century, and a 10th decrease would reflect more pain for General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., and Chrysler LLC and smaller tax collections for road maintenance. On the other hand, the decline may unclog some freeways. Discarded autos are either sold for salvage or to motorists junking even older vehicles.

If GM's US forecast is right, the industry will sell the fewest cars since 1982 next year.

Gas prices, which peaked in July at a record $4.11 a gallon for regular, helped cut vehicle miles traveled by 3.3 percent, or 100.1 billion miles, between October 2007 and October 2008, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

A smaller fleet may accelerate that decline, said Ken Orski, a transportation-policy consultant and publisher of Innovation Briefs, an industry newsletter.

Fewer miles driven means less gas purchased, cutting funds available to fix US roads.

The $43 billion Highway Trust Fund, which gets 90 percent of its revenue from federal gas taxes and pays for highway projects, needed an $8 billion bailout in September to keep from going bust.

Fewer auto registrations will hurt states more than the federal government because they collect the registration fees, Orski said.

And any environmental benefit from fewer cars on the road may be canceled out by drivers using older cars that spew more pollutants, said Joshua Schank, director of transportation research at Bipartisan Policy Center. Less-crowded roads are also a negative indicator for the economy, Schank said.

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