Regional Commuter Bike share

I took the numbers from the America Community Survey for the four "places" in our region that are reported on (DC, Arlington, Alexandria and Silver Spring) and I weighted them by population and averaged them to get a regional score. After being flat, we improved a lot in 2008

2005 - 1.26%
2006 - 1.33%
2007 - 1.28%
2008 - 1.63%

Of course there is a wide error bar on these. For example the year Silver Spring gets a 0.0%, the margin of error is +/- 0.6% which is more than their share in every year but 2005. Still 2008 represents a 21% jump over 2007. Not too shabby.

Comments

[silverspringtrails]

This data is useful for showing trends over time, and for comparisons between cities. Thanks for showing it.

But as I understand it, the data only shows the bike share as the "primary" mode for travel to work. Mixed mode trips using the bike, for example bike to transit, are not shown by the data. Also not shown is trips that are not to work, like trips for errands or recreation - and these trips are a very significant portion of total trips.

My point is this data misses a significant amount of important cycling activity. I hope future surveys can capture information on more than just primary mode to work.

[Washcycle]

Right you are about the limitations. MWCOG keeps statistics of total trips which has a higher balance of bike usage. For example, I seem to recall that in the Palisades neighborhood 10% of trips were by bicycle.

[Scott]

10% in Palisades? That's amazing. Isn't that the crazy-rich neighborhood with no public transportation, that gets among DC's worst scores on WalkScore.com?

Did a quick google to see if these stats were on MWCOG's website, but couldn't find anything. Any idea where to find them?

[Washcycle]

I was wrong. It was from the Bicycle Master Plan. There's commute to work map of DC and Palisades is in the highest group (at 5 to 8.5%) along with a few other neighborhoods. This is based on 2000 census data.