This map shows the proportion of individuals in Washington communities living without internet access, paired with the proportion of those living without access to a vehicle. Lack of access to internet and personal vehicles are indicators of historical disinvestment in rural and Tribal communities in Washington.

Rural communities have less access to broadband connection and affordable transportation than urban communities. Broadband access was commonly identified as an infrastructure priority by interviewees for the Community-Defined Decarbonization project. While broadband access is required to enable grid-connected buildings and energy demand management, its primary value to the interviewees was connecting communities, decreasing isolation, and increasing access to distance learning and telemedicine.

In addition to broadband access, interviewees noted the challenges associated with limited access to affordable, reliable transportation, which hinders travel to places that are critical to their wellbeing.

Note: For the Community-Defined Decarbonization project, the definition of a rural community is a census tract that lies beyond a metropolitan tract (including micropolitan, small town, and rural tracts). Read the full Community-Defined Decarbonization report here.

The map is divided into census tracts, which are color-coded to show the community-level relationship between access to internet and personal vehicles. Black lines indicate counties and red lines indicate Tribal Lands.

The darkest green (top right square in the legend) indicates communities with high proportions of people without access to internet and high proportions of people without access to personal vehicles. The blue (bottom right) indicates communities with high proportions of people without access to personal vehicles but low proportions of people without access to internet, and the light green (top left) shows the opposite (high proportions of people without access to internet but low proportions of people without access to personal vehicles).

Lastly, the light yellow (bottom left) shows areas that have low proportions of both people without access to internet and people without access to personal vehicles. Note: The white area between Yakima County and Franklin County is Hanford, a decommissioned nuclear production site where no one is permitted to live within 35 miles and hence is not a census tract.

Click on the map to see associated data, including the rurality of the census tract (rural or urban). Use the + and – buttons in the upper left to zoom in and out of different census tracts and use the search bar in the upper righthand corner to search for an address.