I just saw an interesting article in the Seattle Times this morning. Full title in the print paper is “We’ve Hit ‘Peak Car’: Seattle Sees Biggest Drop in Ownership Among Large Cities”. The article by Gene Balk is here. The latest estimates (from 2018) show 81% of Seattle households owned at least one vehicle, which is the lowest rate since the 1980s. It has dropped 3% since 2010:
...which is a tremendous change in less than 10 years. In fact, among the 50 most-populous U.S. cities, Seattle’s drop in its car-ownership rate is the biggest, and by a large margin.
Only 10 other cities among the 50 largest showed any decline at all. (New York is still the grand champion of carlessness though — at 55% of households not owning cars.) Seattle has put a lot of money into improved transit over the past couple of decades — and it looks like that may be paying off. Now that light rail is expanding North, South, and East — I hope the trend will expand. In 2 years we may be able to use Amtrak from Bellingham to get to Seattle, and light rail/bus to get all around the Seattle and East Side metro area. Having lived in the Boston area for a long time, we used to ride all over on the “T”, and after we moved out to the Seattle area I would sometimes use a nearby park and ride and the bus to get into Bellevue and Seattle proper. I look forward to doing that kind of thing again.