The
Seattle Times reports that 81% of Seattle households had a car in 2018, down three points from 2010. That was the fastest decline of any top-50 city per Census numbers.
The number of cars increased since the population was up 22%, so it's not all good. Gentrification might also have a role.
The drop is related to how we're growing. Most Seattle land is houses only, and growth gets concentrated into urban village nodes all over town (about 15% of the land). That means growth is mostly near decent bus service and sometimes rail. The heaviest growth is in greater Downtown and the U District, so a lot more commuters can walk. Meanwhile, any area with frequent transit (about 3/4 of all residents) can build much less parking in new projects, including fairly broad areas where none is needed. Per the Times in 2016, something like 0.6 parking spaces were getting built per housing unit in the denser areas, however they defined that at the time.
In the coming years, we'll get a lot more accessory units due to new legislation, and the 15% recently changed to be closer to 20% I'd guess. Many of the urban village areas have also been upzoned. Improvements in bus service mean more areas will have lower parking requirements. We'll simultaneously be able to spread growth a little more but build more intensively in the existing nodes.
Other cities such as Denver (90% in 2018), Miami (84%), and Boston (66%) saw substantial increases in households with cars. This is an interesting dynamic mixing the quality of transit, the availability of parking (including requirements and market expectations for new buildings), poverty in some cases, large student populations, and so on.
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