The increasing traffic around Cascadia isn’t an illusion. The region added a few hundred thousand people in the last year, bringing the total to nearly 14 million.

Washington added 120,000 people, the largest gain since the early 1990s, thanks to rapid job growth. The total was about 6,375,600 on April 1, according to the state. About one-third of the influx came from California.

British Columbia jumped by 53,807 to 4,292,166. International immigration accounted for 80% of the province’s gain, according to Statistics Canada. The province has added 265,536 since the beginning of 2000.

The latest figures for Oregon put the state’s population at 3.6 million as of July 2005.