Public comment open for Chevron near Bethany Lake; How many electric cars are there in the Bethany area?

Hello Everyone-

Public comments for Bethany Lake Chevron open!

The public comment for the Chevron near Bethany Lake application is now open. The land use case is L2100244. While writing your comment please be polite to the County Land Use and Transportation staff reviewing the messages. And feel free to use primary source references, data, and perspectives from our site.

How many electric cars are there in the Bethany area?

If you drive around the Bethany area you will see many residents are making the transition to electric vehicles.

According to Oregon DMV records the 97229 and 97006 zip codes have seen 3,134 registered electric vehicles since 2019 (source).

In those two zip codes in 2019 there were 89,694 vehicles (source) so electric vehicles make up roughly 3% of total vehicles registered in the area.

A 3% EV uptake is more than 3 times higher than the rest of Oregon at 0.9%! In fact the 97229 zip code has the most EVs of any zip code in Oregon.

What could that mean for a fuel/gas/service station in the area?

Washington County, Oregon State, and the US Federal government all have strategic plans to cut consumption of gasoline for passenger vehicles. Further, our community seems particularly excited to adopt EVs. So, there will be less demand for gasoline in Bethany in particular. It isn't unimaginable that as a result there will come a time when the station needs to be closed and the gas tanks are removed.

In fact Bloomberg Green wrote an article about this very problem:

We may not need as many gas stations in a decade as we do now, but which ones will close? I don’t think it will be the small urban stations with few amenities; those exist thanks to a captive market of city folks with no other fueling options. I doubt too that it will be the massive stations on highway off-ramps either; those have a similarly captive market of long-haul drivers, and could also be adapted to electric vehicles. I imagine it will be the suburban locations serving populations with ample ability to charge at home that will be the first to go.

Read more on Bloomberg Green When Is a Gas Station Not a Gas Station? When All the Cars Are EVs

Also, redeveloping former gas station properties that contain leaking underground storage tanks (see our last newsletter) can be expensive:

But there was a hitch. The site was contaminated from leaking gasoline tanks that had since been removed. Consequently the lot had sat vacant for a few years while Shell remediated the soil. Redevelopment had its challenges. The 3,200-square-foot project took three years, in part because once construction got under way, oily slicks formed on the surface of rainwater pooling in the excavated site, requiring more remediation.

Read more on Life after Corner Gas: The challenges of developing old service stations

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Thank You,

Brandon