A look at who drives in Washington

Plus an update on that Seattle IE and some recommended reading

Part of the perennial debate about housing in Washington is how much of it needs to be built around the automobile. Today we’ve got some interesting data points on that front.

You most likely know that most people own and drive a car in Washington, something that public transit hasn’t changed much. Even in Seattle, home to the most robust mass transit in the state, some 80 percent of folks still drive passenger vehicles.¹ That factoid was virtually a campaign slogan for the Association of Washington Cities this year in its failed crusade to preserve strict parking mandates for residential development. 

Here’s why you should care about this: Over the past decade, cities like Seattle have added nearly as many cars as people—something that’s just begun to level off. This tends to make three things a whole lot worse: traffic², pollution³, and the cost of housing.