The number of vehicle miles in the United States continued to climb in May, with drivers in the Northeast traveling 1.5 percent farther than in the previous year.

In its latest Traffic Volume Trends report, the Federal Highway Administration determined that Americans traveled 281.23 billion miles during the month. This total was up 2.2 percent from May 2016.

The seasonally adjusted travel total stood at 267.2 billion miles for the month, a year-over-year increase of 1.6 percent. Drivers in the U.S. traveled an estimated 1.3 trillion miles in the first five months of the year, while the moving 12-month total reached approximately 3.19 trillion miles.

In the Northeast region—which includes the New England states as well as New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania—drivers traveled an estimated total of 39.39 billion miles. Travel in Connecticut was up 1.4 percent to 2.92 billion miles, while travel in Rhode Island rose 0.9 percent to 624 million miles.

The 13 states of the West had the strongest increase in travel, which was up 3.2 percent from the previous year to an estimated 61.99 billion miles. Travel increased 2.4 percent in the South Atlantic region—eight states from Maryland to Florida, as well as the District of Columbia—to 60.58 billion miles.

In addition to the modest increase in the Northeast, smaller travel increases were recorded in the South Gulf and North Central region. The former, which includes eight states ranging from Kentucky to Texas, had a 2 percent increase in travel to reach 56.84 billion miles. The latter, which encompasses 12 states from Ohio to North Dakota, had a travel total of 62.43 billion miles – up 1.5 percent from the previous year.

Utah had the largest travel increase, with its total of 2.74 billion miles marking a 5 percent increase from May 2016. Travel was also up 4.7 percent to 2.58 billion miles in Nevada and 4.5 percent to 4.55 billion miles in Colorado.

Only three states and the District of Columbia had decreases in travel. Wyoming's travel total of 817 million miles was a year-over-year decline of 1.1 percent. Both South and North Dakota had a travel decrease of 0.9 percent, to 847 million miles in the former state and 815 million miles in the latter. In the District of Columbia, travel fell 0.2 percent to 292 million miles.

These were also the only four states to have a decrease in travel on urban arterial roads. Wyoming had the largest drop, with urban travel falling 3.7 percent to 161 million miles. Nevada had the strongest increase in urban arterial travel, which rose 5.2 percent to 1.36 billion miles.

Rural arterial travel increased in every state except Alaska, Illinois, Mississippi, and New York. The largest decrease occurred in New York, where rural travel was down 0.9 percent to 1.19 billion miles. Utah had the largest increase in this type of travel, which was up 5.4 percent to 552 million miles.

The FHWA's Traffic Volume Trends reports are based on information from thousands of continuous traffic counting stations across the U.S. These stations measure traffic flow against the traffic volume in the same month of the previous year to estimate the number of vehicle miles traveled; the data is released on a two-month delay.

May's report included information from 5,044 stations, including 71 in Rhode Island. No stations were listed for Connecticut.