King County stands out for walking and biking, but driving dominates
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King County has a relatively high share of trips taken on foot or by bicycle rather than in a vehicle, a new report finds.
Why it matters: Walking and biking are healthier alternatives to driving, while places designed for people rather than cars can have less air pollution, better neighborhood connectivity and other benefits.
Driving the news: Transportation data firm StreetLight ranked all counties with at least 150 people per square mile in the contiguous U.S. by their share of trips taken via "active transportation" — walking and biking — compared to vehicles in 2023.
Caveat: Transit trips were excluded from the analysis, which looked solely at car trips versus trips on foot or on two wheels.
Zoom in: By that metric, King County saw 14% of trips taken by walking and biking in 2023.
- That was well above the average among the counties analyzed, which was 9.5%.
Yes, but: King County didn't rank among the top 30 counties when it comes to active transportation.
- The top five were all part of the New York area, including New York (Manhattan, 59%), the Bronx (44%), Brooklyn (43%), Queens (35%) and New Jersey's Hudson County (28%).
- Rounding out the top 10 were Suffolk, Massachusetts (Boston, 28%); San Francisco (27%); Washington, D.C. (24%); Tompkins, New York (Ithaca, 23%) and Philadelphia (22%).
The fine print: Some places that include dense urban areas — think Los Angeles and Chicago — also didn't make the top 30, as they're part of "sprawling counties," the report notes.
- Still, "census tracts within each of the cities proper might show significant active transportation activity," the report says.
The bottom line: Seattleites may walk or bike a fair amount compared to the national average — but countywide, we're still more vehicle-dependent than dozens of other U.S. metro areas.