Here are three things which Insider discovered after reading the September 14 2020 Geopath DMA report.  The Geopath report breaks out average daily miles travelled for 210 US DMA’s for March 2, 2020 to September 17, 2020.

Average daily miles travelled is down in 3 of 4 cities in the US.

The report shows that average daily miles travelled since March 2 is up in 51 DMA’s and down in 158 DMA’s.

Traffic is up the most in small cities.

Here’s a chart showing a list of the DMA’s with the largest increase in average daily miles travelled since March 3 compared with their market size.

The 20 DMA’s with the Largest Increase in Average Daily Miles Travelled from March 2, 2020 to August 31, 2020  Compared with Neilsen Market Size

The DMA’s with the greatest increase in daily miles travelled are all in small rural markets.   Seasonal travel patterns also play into it as many of these communities are in areas with severe winters where you can expect fewer people to be on the road.

Traffic is down the most in big cities.

Here’s a list of the 20 DMA’s with the largest decline in average daily miles travelled.  They are almost all large cities.  Laredo is the exception.  Many of the cities also have a population which is reliant on public transit.

The 20 DMA’s with the Largest Drop in Average Daily Miles Travelled from March 2, 2020 to August 31, 2020  Compared with Nielsen Market Size

A majority of the DMA’s are within 10% of normal.

123 of the 209 of 59% of the DMA’s have a change in averaged daily miles travelled which is less than 10% from pre-covid.

Insider’s take:  Kudos to Kym Frank and the Geopath crew for assembling and and publicizing the data.  You should be excerpting and sharing the data for your DMA with clients.

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