To some degree yes but there's still neighborhoods that will reject proposals. There's all sorts of debate on this (just yesterday saw windshield flyers against upzones) - to summarize in a fun way see https://twitter.com/YIMBYwiki/status/951255440481857536
I have family in West Seattle and can sympathize with the increased traffic that increased density has brought. Compared to 10 years ago, it is much more built up but no road infrastructure was upgraded so it has turned into quite a mess.
Yeah, I've thankfully avoided most of the seattle traffic over the years by working remote but have gotten disgruntled with some of the public transit issues (bus bunching problems / stop closures / etc.). On the plus side the density's attracted more services - we have three 'grab n' go' car-rental services (zipcar/car2go/reachnow) and three dockless bicycle rental services (spin/limebike/ofo) which is seemingly more than any city I can think of in the world.
Most folks working at local medium-large businesses seem to get price-reduced orca cards for their daily commute.
