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Monday, January 2, 2006

Size Matters

Posted by JOSH FEIT on January 2 at 1:17 AM

This should be good news: Washington state added 400,000 people between July ‘00 and July ‘05. We’ve hit 6.3 million (making us the 14th most populous state), and we’re expected to hit 6.8 million by 2010.

This means Washington (King County) might get an additional seat in Congress when they reapportion the seats after the 2010 census. (Right now, each seat in Congress represents about 630,000 people.)

The article doesn’t say where the growth is concentrated, but I’m guessing King County is the hub.

It sure would be nice if we had some speedy elevated mass transit to go along with all the people.

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1

I hope redistricting splits Reichert's 8th CD in half. But this kind of stuff is a crap shoot.

Posted by Belltowner | January 2, 2006 4:47 AM

2

Here's the population change by county based on the 2004 American Communities Survey. It's a year older, but it does have a breakdown by county.

King County only increased by about 40,000 people (ouch), but Pierce and Snohomish did increase by about 45,000 and 38,000 respectively (and Clark by 47,000).

Posted by Joshua H | January 2, 2006 7:05 AM

3

Hunh. Looks like y'all don't really need a speedy elevated mass transit system ...

Posted by Brian | January 2, 2006 7:50 AM

4

from that 2004 data, it looks like the counties with the biggest growth relative to the 2000 census are Franklin (+21%), Clark (+14%), and Island (+11%). Although King took on an additional 40,000 people, this is only a 2% increase over 2000.

Posted by josh | January 2, 2006 10:53 AM

5

Even though 40,000 is a relatively small increase as opposed to the larger growth in Pierce and Clark Counties, the metro aggregation of Seattle and it's suburbs puts our metro area at 3.6 million people. I think we need some speedy mass transit when half the state's population is concentrated in the metro area (Everett to Tacoma).

Posted by Ari | January 2, 2006 2:43 PM

6

Las Vegas grows by 5,000 people a MONTH (that means they match King County's 5 year growth every *eight months*), and has nothing more than more roads and more homes stretching farther out towards the mountains.

Yes, we need mass transit, but it could be far, far worse.

Posted by Gomez | January 2, 2006 3:42 PM

7

Their monorail is a giant tourist shuttle. It doesn't serve any part of the city outside of the Las Vegas Strip.

Posted by Gomez | January 3, 2006 1:06 AM

8

It doesn't even serve the Strip for shit. It runs along the back of the casinos, by the planet-sized airconditioner units and the chainsmoking employees on break. Those blocks to get back there are longer than anything in Seattle, especially in Vegas heat.

Still, it's better than any Seattle mass transit. Hmm.

Posted by fnarf999 | January 4, 2006 10:27 AM

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