Seattle's car ‘population' breaks long slump

For years, census data told a clear story: The number of cars in Seattle had pretty much stopped growing.

I wrote in 2021 that the city might have hit "peak car" because the total number of vehicles owned or leased in Seattle hadn't changed since 2017, when the tally hit 460,800. After I wrote that column, the number stayed in the 460,000s through 2023.

But maybe I was wrong. Newly released census data shows the number of cars in Seattle jumped once again in 2024.

That year, Seattle households owned or leased 481,700 vehicles, an increase of 18,300 cars and trucks from 2023 levels, marking the first statistically significant jump since 2017.

One year doesn't make a trend, of course, and we'll have to see what future data shows. But after a long period of flatlining, it's interesting to see an increase.

If you want to point to one group of people behind the rise in the number of cars in Seattle, it's renters. While homeowners are still far more likely to have a car than renters, Seattle's net gain of cars in 2024 was entirely renter-driven.

Renter-occupied households added more than 20,000 vehicles, going from 183,700 in 2023 to 204,200 in 2024. At the same time, owner-occupied households actually shed a few cars. Their estimated total dropped from 279,600 to 277,500.

That said, the gap in car ownership remains enormous between owners and renters.

Among owners, just 7,400 households - 5% - had no vehicle in 2024. Among renters, 68,400 households - 31% - got by without a car.

There are reasons for that. Renters are more likely to live in densely populated, transit-rich areas and may not have a dedicated parking space at their apartment building. Renters are also more likely to be single and childless and to have lower household incomes. Those factors make a car-free lifestyle both more feasible and more attractive.

Seattle does have a lot of affluent renters. The median household income for renters was about $88,000 in 2024, among the highest of any big city in the U.S. And that may help explain why car ownership is growing among renters here - simply put, they can afford it.

Nationally, Seattle still sits near the bottom when it comes to car ownership. Among the nation's 50 largest cities, the city ranks 10th for the lowest rate of vehicle ownership, at 126 cars per 100 city households.

Only three major U.S. cities have fewer cars than households. New York stands out from the pack with just 60 vehicles per 100 households, followed by Washington D.C. (84 per 100) and Boston (94 per 100). San Francisco ranked fourth, with roughly a 1:1 ratio of vehicles to households. Philadelphia rounded out the top 5 at 104 vehicles per 100 households.

Some of Seattle's peer cities were noticeably higher. Minneapolis came in at 130 vehicles per 100 households, Portland at 146, Denver at 152, and Austin at 153. San Jose was the highest on the list, at 199.

So even with this year's bump, Seattle remains one of the country's least car-dependent major cities. The increase simply ended a long period in which the number of vehicles appeared to have stopped growing.

Whether that growth continues, or whether 2024 turns out to be a one-year blip, is something the next few census data releases will tell us.

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