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A car-free Austin seems unlikely anytime soon

Households without cars decrease, bucking national trend

Austin traffic I-35
Austin traffic
Wikimedia Commons

Austin likes to see itself as a trendsetter, but when it comes to car-free households, it’s way behind the rest of the country. According to a recent report on KEYE-TV, the local CBS affiliate, car-free households are decreasing in the city and on the rise seemingly everywhere else.

The story cites numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau that reports an upward trend in such households nationally, from 8.9 percent in 2014 to 9.1 percent in 2015. A story on Medium.com quoted on the CBS site, though, puts Austin at number 46 of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas it looked at for car-free living, with a local decrease of 0.3 from 2010 to 2015.

Texas comes in at as the 49th state in the nation for car-free households.

The local story quoted Austin Mayor Steve Adler on the subject; he said the city’s recently passed mobility bond would help, although it’s not the whole solution.

Car-free households decreasing in Austin, opposite of national trend [CBS Austin]

Car-free living in the United States: What the data says [Medium.com]