In the fall of 2022, Snotrac conducted three surveys to better understand the mobility gaps of people with disabilities, older adults, youth, low income individuals, and people of color within Mid, East, and South Snohomish County.
Our latest report, Compilation Report of Snotrac's 2022 Snohomish County Subarea Mobility Surveys, combines the results from those three surveys, providing a unique picture into the transportation needs of residents, and their hopes for improving transit, walking, and biking in the county.
In our surveys, 72% of of residents said building sidewalks, curb ramps, and crosswalks should be a medium or high priority. In addition, 73% of residents said improving local bus service so it goes more places should be a medium or high priority priority.
Three other solutions had greater than 60% support with at least 30% saying the solutions were a high priority:
increasing commuter transit service.
increasing the frequency of local bus routes.
building multi-use trails.
Additional solutions with greater than 50% support included providing more microtransit service options like Alderwood Zip, completing citywide bikeway networks, creating circulator bus routes within cities, providing a transit service to hiking trails, and expanding Homage Senior Service's Transportation Assistance Program (TAP).
These are overwhelming results for improving walking, biking, and transit across the county.
It's easy to see why. More than 45% of respondents identified barriers to driving where they need to go, and 81% identified barriers to getting where they need to go without driving.
Respondents biggest barrier was the bus was too infrequent, took too much time, and didn't go where they needed it to go (58% of respondents). Their next biggest barrier were streets that were too unsafe to walk or bike (31%).
By combining our three surveys, our next report breaks down all the results by subarea, ability, income, age, and race. In addition, the report also provides the results from cities with a minimum number of respondents. We encourage you to dig into the report.
The report outlines several key recommendations for these areas, which our Mid County, East County, and South County committees have been using to set their priorities. You can learn more about Snotrac's work at the local level and how you can get involved here.