U.S. highway travel rose a weak 0.1 percent in May from a year earlier, increasing 300 million miles to almost 261 billion miles, the U.S. Transportation Department said Thursday.
It was the third month in a row that highway travel was up, but May's increase was much smaller than the 1.2 percent jump in April and the 2 percent increase in March, providing fresh evidence of the weak economic recovery.
The number of miles driven this year was down 0.1 percent, or 1.6 billion miles, from the same period in 2009. This year's overall decline reflects the sharp drop in highway travel during January and February, when record snow storms along the East Coast kept many drivers off the roads.
Highway travel in May fell in the West, the Midwest and the Great Lakes regions, but increased in the Northeast, southern Atlantic and southern Gulf states.
However, three Gulf Coast states most worried about losing tourists because of the BP oil spill had decreases in their highway travel, with Louisiana down 2.7 percent, Mississippi down 0.9 percent and Alabama down 0.8 percent.
Florida, where the oil spill has mainly affected only its northern Gulf beaches, had a small 0.3 percent rise in the total number of miles driven during May.
The Transportation Department tracks motorists through more than 4,000 automatic traffic recorders operated by state highway agencies.
