Coming Down From Peak Car

The Seattle Times ($) is reporting that recently-released 2023 Census data indicates the percentage of households in Seattle which do not own or lease a car reached 20% in 2023, the highest proportion since the Census started tracking rates of vehicle ownership:

There were roughly 365,000 households in Seattle in 2023. Of those, around 74,000, or just over 20%, did not have a car. Just two years earlier, in 2021, the percentage was around 17% for no-car households in the city.

The column notes renters are more likely to live in walkable neighborhoods with better transit access, negating the need to own a personal vehicle. On the other hand, the Times also notes homeowners tend to be wealthier than renters, and car ownership is expensive.

Renters in Seattle are much more likely to live without a car than homeowners. Nearly 67,000 renter households did not have a car - that's about 1 in 3 renter households. Among homeowners, only about 7,200 were no-car households, which pencils out to about 5%.

Unsurprisingly, the Times' map census tract data shows no-car households are predominantly located in Downtown (including SLU, First Hill, and Capitol Hill) and the U-District (despite the data excluding group living" such as dorms), with pockets of low-car areas around Northgate and Hillman City. Several other neighborhood around the city exhibit slightly below-average rates of car ownership; check out the maps in the article.

After Seattle become majority-renter in 2018, the Times speculated Seattle had reached Peak Car in 2021. Meanwhile, the number of cars registered in Seattle (~463,000) has stayed relatively flat since hitting ~461,000 in 2017. With the majority of new residents renting apartments in dense corridors, the Time's prediction we'd be coming down from peak car" seems to have come true.

Among the 50 largest cities in the nation, Seattle (20.3%) is now 9th place between Detroit (19.4%) and Cleveland (22.4%). In the lead, obviously, is NYC (56.2%), followed by D.C. (36.3%), Boston (33.3%), and San Francisco (30.9%).