Transportation
A Growing Seattle Goes All In on Transit
Voters agreed to fund expansions and improvements for local bus and light rail systems. A short film shows how that choice is shaping the city’s future.
Right now, 25 percent of Seattle residents live near a bus that comes every 12 minutes. By 2025, as many as 72 percent of city residents should have that kind of access to transit, thanks to the success of a ballot measure for the largest increase in bus service since the bus system was created in 1972.
“We can’t handle any more cars than we currently have,” Scott Kubly, director of the Seattle Department of Transportation, says in the new short film ”Seattle: America’s Next Top Transit City.” “Our mode split, over the next 10 years, needs to go from 30 percent single-occupancy vehicle to 25 percent single-occupancy vehicle. And the lion’s share of that is going to be carried on the bus.”