American drivers covered a record number of miles in 2016, exceeding a high point set last year.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, travel in the United States totaled 3.22 trillion miles at the end of the year. The tally was up 2.8 percent from the previous record of 3.15 trillion miles set in 2015, which was the highest travel total since 2007.

Motorists closed out the year with an estimated travel total of 263.64 billion miles in December. The seasonally adjusted total for the month was 269.3 billion miles. The travel total includes passenger vehicles, heavy trucks, and buses.

Despite decreases in travel in the Northeast and North Central regions, overall travel was up by 0.5 percent. The seasonally adjusted total had a 0.6 percent increase from December 2015.

In the Northeast region—which includes the New England states as well as New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania—December's travel total of 37.79 billion miles was down 1.4 percent from the previous year. Overall travel decreased in every state in the region but New York and Vermont.

Connecticut's estimated travel total stood at 2.53 billion miles, a year-over-year decrease of 1.6 percent. This included a 1.6 percent decrease in urban arterial travel to 1.85 billion miles and a 1.8 percent decrease in rural arterial travel to 121 million miles.

Rhode Island's December travel was down 3.1 percent to 597 million miles. The state's urban arterial travel shrank 3.5 percent to 443 million miles, while rural arterial travel remained unchanged at approximately 55 million miles.

Travel was down from the previous year in 10 of the 12 states in the North Central region, which stretches from Ohio to North Dakota. The region's travel total for December was 56.89 billion miles, a decrease of 2.3 percent from the previous year.

The 13 states of the Western region had the largest increase in travel. Drivers in December covered 62.6 billion miles in these states, up 2.9 percent from the previous year.

In the South Atlantic region—eight states from Florida to Maryland, plus the District of Columbia—travel was up 1.7 percent to 56.07 billion miles. The eight states of the South Gulf region, which range from Texas to Kentucky, had a 0.9 percent increase in travel to 50.29 billion miles.

Louisiana had the largest unadjusted single state increase in travel, which increased 5.8 percent from the previous year to total 4.24 billion miles. Louisiana also had the largest increases in both urban arterial and rural arterial travel at 5.9 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. Utah had a 5.2 percent increase to 2.36 billion miles, while Nevada's travel rose 5.1 percent to 2.33 billion miles.

Overall travel was down from the previous year in 27 states. The largest single state unadjusted decrease in travel occurred in North Dakota, which had a 6.2 percent drop in travel to 752 million miles. Travel was down 4.4 percent to 8.43 billion miles in Michigan and 3.9 percent to 9.49 billion miles in Ohio.

Thirty states had a year-over-year drop in urban arterial travel in December. The largest decrease occurred in Arkansas, where urban arterial travel fell 6 percent to 1.24 billion miles.

Rural arterial travel was down in 23 states. North Dakota had the largest drop in this type of travel, which fell 5.6 percent to 375 million miles.

The FHWA "Travel Trends" reports are based on hourly traffic count data from thousands of stations in the United States. These stations measure the volume of traffic and compare it to the same month in the previous year to estimate the number of miles traveled in the state. December's report included information from 5,126 stations, including 33 in Connecticut and 79 in Rhode Island.