National bike commuting sees its first drop since data collection began 10 years ago

The Census Bureau starter releasing annual estimates of bike commuting in 2005 and in every year since then, bike commuting has gone up - until now. In 2015 data released yesterday, bike commuting went down a little bit from 0.620% to 0.597%, or about 9000 people total. There are about 885,000 American bike commuters according to the Census.

In DC, bike commuting went up from 3.9% of all commuters last year to 4.1%, a small increase and good enough for a tie, with 2012, for the 2nd best year. It is not good enough, however, to meet the 10-year goal set out in the 2005 DC Bicycle Master Plan, which was 5%. Driving was down in 2014 dropping to 38.8% from 40.7%. Meanwhile, walking is up to 14.0% from 13.1% and transit dropped again, from 36.1% to 35.8%. Working from home was up 1% to 6% total.  

Among major cities, DC was again #4, again behind Portland, Minneapolis and San Francisco. Minneapolis is now at 5%. 

Elsewhere in the region:

Arlington continues its steady growth, up to 1.9% from 1.8% and Alexandria is back up a little to 1.2% from 1.0% last year. 

Silver Spring, last year's bright stop, collapsed from 1.3% to 0.6%. Also, over the last two years, ACS has been reporting numbers for Rockville and Gaithersburg too. The former is down from 0.8% to 0.7% and the later is holding steady at 0.2%.

Comments

[Crickey7]

Montgomery and PG County have done very, very little to promote bike commuting. It's well past time for those jurisdictions to start treating this as a viable mode.

[ACyclistInThePortCIty]

It would be interesting to see how this breaks down. My guess is that "lycranaut" and "urbanist hipster" cycling continue to increase apace, but that working class cycling, motivated by inability to afford a car and abysmal bus service in places where biking is doable but not great, may have declined with the recovery and the bump in household income.

Upper Middle Class cyclists sometimes forget how many of the last category exist. In the DC suburbs these are a very recognizable subculture, usually hispanic, often riding beater bikes on sidewalks without lights or helmets. I think it is also common in many small low wage cities around the country.

[Crickey7]

That's true, though I think the younger set isn't wedded to any mode, and they'll happily mix modes. They'll do whatever is easier and cheapest. If that's Uber, then they'll Uber. They'll bike to Metro if that's a safe, easy option. Make biking easier and more pleasant, and you'll capture modal share.

[barry vance]

I'd like to think bicycles are becoming more accepted, but with the proliferation of more and wider roads, comes more traffic which makes many would be bicyclists far more reluctant to try it out. IDK, I just know how difficult it is to convince my neighbors to replace a 1-2 mile drive with bike commute, and safety always comes up.