National bike commuting down again, DC up, region mixed

Last week, the Census Bureau released its annual American Community Survey and for the 2nd year in a row bike commuting was down, and this time by a larger number.  In 2016 data, bike commuting went down from  0.597% to 0.575% or about 22000 people total. There are now about 863,000 American bike commuters according to the Census. Streetsblog theorizes that the drop in global gas prices worldwide is the cause of the drop, which seems reasonable - people do respond to financial incentives, but the cost of gas isn't really that much of the cost of driving so I' skeptical. Adding to my doubt is the fact that since 2014, driving is also down - from 85.7% to 85.4%. The more likely cause is that working from home is up more than 10% over that time and is eating into every other mode. Transit, driving and biking are all down; walking and taxis are flat and working from home is up.

In DC, bike commuting bucked the trend and went up from 4.1% of all commuters last year to a whopping 4.6%, the highest rate ever recorded for DC and enough to move us back into 2nd place among America's largest cities behind Portland.  These gains were almost entirely the result of more bike commuting among women. Nice job, ladies.

Despite that, we still remain below the 10-year goal set out in the 2005 DC Bicycle Master Plan, which was 5%.

Meanwhile, driving dropped again, from 38.8% to 38.1%. Walking also dropped, to 13.7% from 14.0% and transit was up, from 35.8% to 36.1%. Working from home was unchanged at 6% total.  

Elsewhere in the region:

Arlington continues its steady growth, up to 2.4% from 1.9% (now comparable to Boston) but Alexandria is down to 0.9% from 1.2% last year. 

Silver Spring, recovered some of its gains from last year, ticking up slightly from 0.6% to 0.7% 1.3%.  Rockville and Gaithersburg meanwhile collapsed. The former is down from 0.7% to 0.1% and the later is is down from 0.2% to 0.0%. For Gaithersburg, at least, there's no where to go but up. 

Comments

[DE]

4.6%! We're Number 2! Eat that, Minneapolis (cold & snow) and San Francisco (steep hills).

Although, in reality, I suppose I'm part of the 2.4% of Arlington. I'd say that 2.4% is lame, but there's always Gaithersburg.

[Washcycle]

The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step followed by a realization that you forgot your sunglasses and running back into the house to grab them and then restarting.

[Washcycle]

Minneapolis has the advantage of a lot of abandoned railroad lines and San Francisco has fantastic weather all the time - and no where at all to park.

[DE]

We have different ideas of fantastic weather. :)

But it's a great city for riding. Many of the worst hills can be avoided if you wish, and yes, it's rarely hot.

[ACyclistInThePortCIty]

Be wary of small sample sizes. Neither the spike in Arlington, nor the decline in Alexandria, sound credible to me. Which I think matches up with what Census says about significance intervals.

[Washcycle]

Absolutely, there's a lot of noise in these numbers. More on that in a later post.

[DE]

If I recall, you have to chose just one mode, so it's not going to catch people who are fair-weather cyclists biking a couple of days a week.

[Washcycle]

True. It under counts cyclists, but I saw a really good analysis that shows it doesn't under count them by that much. Like 5% or so.

[Crickey]

I'm going to help next year by immediately riding back home, changing into another outfit and riding back down.