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Collection: Dude, Where Are My Cars?

Traffic Declines in Washington Counties

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VMT per capita, WAFollowing up on the post on declining traffic volumes from a few days back, I looked a bit more closely at the traffic figures for Washington state, comparing them with the brand new Census population counts for Washington counties.  And I also did my best to adjust for a methodology change that the state DOT made in 2004 to measure traffic more accurately.

The end result is the same:  in the largest Washington counties, traffic volumes are either at or below their peaks earlier in the decade.  And the per capita demand for vehicle travel fell by about 8% statewide between 2000 and 2009.

In King County—home to Seattle—total traffic volumes on state highways seem to have peaked in 2003.  But per capita vehicle travel declined steadily through the entire decade, for a total decline of about 10%.

Here are some numbers since 2000 for the largest urban counties in Washington:

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Dude, Where Are My Cars?

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I think you can officially call this a pattern:  traffic volumes all around the Pacific Northwest are falling short of the projections made just a few years ago.  Take a look at just a sampling of the evidence:

  • The Golden Ears Bridge:  Both traffic volumes and tolling revenue on this new bridge outside of Vancouver, BC are falling short of expectations, adding up to “a cumulative shortfall of $63.8 million since 2009 for a bridge that was supposed to pay itself off in 30 years,” according to the Maple Ridge Times.
  • The Columbia River Crossing project:  According to this analysis by Portland economist Joe Cortright, the number of cars taking the I-5 bridge between Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA “has declined every year after 2005.”  The trends are almost the exact opposite of the transportation modelers’ predictions:  “Traffic levels in the nearly five years since CRC forecasts were completed have declined by about 7,000 vehicles per day, rather than increasing by about 7,000 vehicles per day as forecast.”

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