As any local would tell you, Seattle is not exactly a commuter’s-paradise. While that’s been changing over the past decade with with light rail extensions and reworked bus and bike lanes, this city of hills and water corridors makes for a tricky time getting around most everywhere. We love those hills and blue, but dang do they get in the way sometimes.
I wanted to get a better idea of what getting around Seattle looks like–literally. So I’ve made some maps in ArcGIS using public GIS data from Seattle’s GeoData. Here are a few projects I’ve made that may shed some light about what it means to get around the Emerald City.
Commuting: Who ‘Actually‘ Has the Worst Commute?
For my purposes, I’m just talking about those within Seattle City limits. Though as someone growing up on the Eastside, rest assured I see all of you commuting from afar (Everett, Bainbridge, and all the rest).
Hilly Differences
We can tell from here that the central downtown zone favors the shortest commutes. However, we also see a split between corresponding central, hilly neighborhoods–Capital Hill is ostensibly just as close, if not closer, to central Seattle as Queen Anne and Interbay, however the latter enjoy much shorter commutes. This suggests the neighborhoods cater to employees of different companies–in short, Queen Anne likely commutes more to downtown and South Lake Union, while Capital Hill denizens will be more likely to commute further afield.
Squeezing Through Suburbia
To no surprise, those on outer reaches of the city–firmly in suburbia–tend to have longer commutes. But what is notable is by how much. Take West Seattle: the most commonly reported commute time was 20-24 minutes in central West Seattle–move just a tad further to the westerly Sound-facing neighborhoods and that commute time doubles. This highlights the idea that commute time is not just a distance issue, it’s a “stuff between me and work” issue; how many more intersections, small streets, arterials, highways etc. do you need to get through?
We also see a relative equidistant effect from downtown, spiraling outward like a target–the further from downtown, the longer your commute. This is not to say that everyone is heading downtown for work, in fact there are notable vacancies in the central business district as of 2026. But it does say something that, generally speaking, the northernmost and southernmost sides of the city have fairly equally rough commutes–one side is not notably worse off than the other.
The Search for the Most Dangerous Intersection in Seattle
Stay tuned!’s a way more complicated and interesting journey than I originally thought
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