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Have you heard about the recent drop in the growth of per capita vehicle miles traveled?

Since 2008, this measurement of car use has declined. According to a blog post titled "Has Growth in Automobile Use Ended?" on the National Transportation Systems Center blog, the metric typically declines during a recession, but this time it hasn't really picked back up during the recovery. The post's authors note that the decline has been driven in part by "a reduction in driving by young adults." They cite the economy as a major reason why, with gas prices (until quite recently) being relatively high in nominal terms, unemployment and underemployment being sluggish to drop, and e-commerce and online shopping replacing things like trips to the mall.

Whether the drop is a cyclical or secular trend remains to be seen, but it has caught the attention of those with a lot at stake in changing driving trends: car companies. An article from Fast Company suggested that young people are often more interested in owning gadgets like smartphones than automobiles, and that the internet has supplanted some of the things one used to need a car to do.

As you might imagine, this has led automobile companies to rethink their marketing. And it has also led some developers of multi-family communities to try to adapt new developments to the perceived reduced need for parking. A post on Streetsblog USA noted that new multi-family construction projects in cities around the country sometimes allot far fewer parking places to their plans than they had in the past, with some developments in dense cities like Boston and even Miami occasionally even forgoing on-site parking altogether.

In the Bay Area, some recently proposed apartment development projects have altered the standard ratio of units to parking spaces. The San Jose Mercury News, for instance, recently reported on a proposed 202-unit development in San Carlos that would include just 288 parking spaces. Termed the "San Carlos Transit Village," the development intends to attract residents who prefer to use CalTrain and other forms of public transit. The organization Plan Bay Area was formed to help encourage the development of more transit-oriented housing developments in years to come.

Of course, car ownership is still a practical necessity in less dense places that aren't well-served by public transit. The National Transportation Systems Center blog post suggested, for example, that in many cases the decline in vehicle miles driven seems to track declines in employment, and that it does not correspond with a notable uptick in overall public transit use. In other words, fewer people driving to work may not mean that they're walking, riding the bus, or telecommuting.

If it's fair to say that people in some of the Bay Area's most car-centric parts don't live close enough to work to walk, it's likely that many apartment tenants in similar metros are still going to want to drive. That may be why "parking" (along with things like "closets," "newer kitchen appliances," and "laundry") shows up so frequently in the comments on this Apartment Therapy post asking for lists of the "Top 5 Things Renters Look For?" The post is from 2008, at the start of the recent decline in per capita vehicle miles driven, but if gas prices remain low and the economy continues to improve, it's possible that renters will want to own — and park! — their cars at their apartment community.

For Bay Area property developers and managers, catering that need still probably means providing some sort of on-site parking.

Has Growth in Automobile Use Ended? [U.S. Department of Transportation]
Millennials Don't Care About Owning Cars and Car Makers Can't Figure Out Why [Fast Company Co.Exist]
Real Estate Trend: Parking Free Apartment Buildings [Streetsblog USA]
Top 5 Things Renters Look For? [Apartment Therapy]
New version of San Carlos Transit Village comes without underground parking garage [San Jose Mercury News]
Plan Bay Area [Plan Bay Area]