Residents around the region are less likely than in the past to be carless, a survey found, despite the new green trend of getting rid of vehicles.
In fact, Washington-area households are more likely to have three or more vehicles than they were 15 years ago, the survey found.
The study of household travel habits conducted for the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board asked residents in more than 11,000 households about the number of vehicles they owned last year and in 1994.
Only a small fraction reported having no vehicles in their households. And the share of households without any vehicles dropped slightly, from 7.8 percent in 1994 to 6.9 percent in 2008.
Meanwhile, the share of households reporting three or more vehicles rose from 17.5 percent to 19.6 percent, said Robert Griffiths, who led the analysis for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments that works with the Transportation Planning Board. The majority reported having one or two vehicles.
At the same time, household size in the region has been shrinking, Griffiths said, meaning that households have more vehicles per person.
The increase in vehicles occurred even as fuel prices climbed, the environmental movement gained traction in convincing people to find alternatives to fossil-fuel-burning vehicles, and car-sharing services such as Zipcar arrived in the region. Public transit, such as Metro, also increased since 1994, giving residents more options besides driving.
Some in the region may be making some changes, though, especially those who live closer to the heart of the city where they have more alternatives to driving. The same survey found that in downtown D.C., nearly one-third of households reported owning no vehicles.
The number of vehicles registered in the District dropped 5.8 percent between 2005 and 2008, even as the population grew 1.7 percent.
