The first data on U.S. pandemic-era bike commuting is here
The League of American Bicyclists has new reports based on federal data for how Americans are commuting without cars, available on data.bikeleague.org.
You can read their announcement about the new data here.
These listed reports are especially notable:
- 1.1.3 – Percentage of Workers who Primarily Bike or Walk to Work Over Time
- 1.1.4 – Number and Percent of People Biking to Work
- 1.1.5 – Number and Percent of People Walking to Work
- 2.1.3 – Changes in Biking and Walking to Work in States
- 2.1.4 – Changes in Transit and Working from Home in States
- 3.1.2 – Workers Commuting by Public Transit over Time
- 3.1.3 – Workers Commuting by Walking over Time
- 3.1.4 – Workers Commuting by Bicycling over Time
- 3.1.5 – Chart: 10 Cities with the Most Bike Commuters
The data portrays a mixed bag of news. The pandemic disrupted our status-quo of how people commuted to work. More specifically, many people stopped commuting entirely. With that context, it may not be surprising to see that biking and walking commutes also dropped. Almost everywhere in the nation has fewer people biking and walking to work compared to two years ago.
What the data does not capture is that many areas have experienced a “bike boom” during the pandemic, attributed to reduced car traffic and people’s need to get outdoors. We can see that the boom has not spread to commute patterns, at least not that are reported. The announcement notes that this data only represents about 10% of all biking and walking trips.
However you read into these reports, it seems clear that we’re not yet at a tipping-point where most people are ready to start biking and walking instead of car-commuting. We still have a lot of progress to make.