At a guess, your dream place to live and your dream job are in different places. The balancing act is to find a nice compromise, which usually means figuring out a reasonable commute. The Center for Neighborhood Technology analyzed 362 regions for the jobs and transit options available, and compiled the results into a score for each region.
Within the Puget Sound region, Seattle comes out best in every category: the number of transit routes within a half mile (23), jobs accessible within a thirty minute trip (424,924), percentage of commuters using transit (20.98%), and overall score (8.6).
The next best are Tukwila and Shoreline that were in the top five in three of the categories. Tukwila does particularly well in jobs (329,962) and the percentage using transit (15.77%). Shoreline has lots of transit routes within a half mile (13).
In general, the farther out you go, the lower the score gets, which makes sense because lower density means fewer people, fewer buses, and fewer jobs - all which leads to more cars, or more remote workers. The place that counters that trend is Mercer Island with one of the lowest scores in the region (4.0). That may just be the nature of an up-scale bedroom community with big houses, few businesses, and a moat.
Before Seattle gets too happy with itself, it's worth noting that other big cities are doing far better with scores: New York City (9.6), San Francisco (9.6), Washington D.C. (9.3), Chicago (9.1); and with the percentage of commuters using transit: New York City (58.56%), San Francisco (35.39%), Washington D.C. (39.94%), Chicago (28.46%).
Now, how about light rail, monorail, bus lanes, Sounder trains, and trolleys. Maybe it isn't an either/or but rather than more and more kind of situation.
· AllTransit [CNT]