Seattle recently hit a major milestone in its quest to encourage alternatives to driving alone. Fewer than half or 48.5% of Seattleites drive alone to work, a drop of 8.8% in the past decade compared to other modes such as transit, walking and biking. While the number of people who drive alone to work increased by 9%, transit use increased by more than twice that, 20%.
Alexandria has experienced a similar shift, dropping from about two-thirds of residents driving alone to about 58%, a drop of 6.9% which second only to Seattle per Yonah Freemark’s quick chart. This means that even though our working population has increased 25%, driving alone has only grew 12%. Meanwhile, other modes grew much faster as transit and biking is up 52%, carpooling 48%, and taxi, motorcycle and bicycle up 37%. This declining driving trend is born out by a general decline in traffic volumes across many Alexandria streets.
Alexandria getting to work (2005-2015)
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2005
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2015
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2005-2015 changes
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# of people
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% of mode
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# of people
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% of mode
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mode
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2015 increase from 2005
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drove alone
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49,885
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65%
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55,971
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58%
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-6.9%
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12%
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carpool
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6,079
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8%
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8,982
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9%
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1.4%
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48%
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transit
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13,766
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18%
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20,907
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22%
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3.8%
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52%
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Walk
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2,560
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3%
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3,901
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4%
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0.7%
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52%
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Taxicab, motorcycle, bicycle
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1,718
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2%
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2,351
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2%
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0.2%
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37%
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Total working population
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76,877
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96,479
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25%
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When comparing Alexandria to this list of other large US cities, our 6.9% drop is the second highest. The reasons for this have less to do with building new transit and more to do with better planning. While Alexandria has moderately expanded its DASH and WMATA buses and build Metroway, the city has added a lot of housing and jobs close to transit. For example, the Patent and Trademark Office was built with 3,750 parking spaces for about 7,350 employees in 2005, or 0.51 spaces per employee, and with about 9,000 employees today, this has dropped to 0.42 per employee. As a result, many employees do not drive alone to work and the neighborhood (Census Tract 2007.02) has the highest transit ridership in the city, 42.5%, the most people walking to work, 15%, and the fewest people driving alone, 33.2% While some drivers experience congestion during rush hour, traffic on nearby streets is either flat or has modestly declined. Alexandria has successfully added jobs without growing traffic, a goal that everyone should get behind.
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