Wednesday, August 19, 2015
New US Census Report on Growth of Bike Commuting
Alison Griswold in Slate.com pointed out this week new U.S.census data showing that biking to work is growing, especially among richer Americans.
According to a Census Bureau report on America’s commuting patterns that was released last week, biking to work is slowly but steadily on the rise as more young, urban adults are giving up on driving to work. This was particularly true in cities with strong public transportation networks, where automobile commuting declined by 6 percentage points among workers ages 25 to 29.
Although biking to work is most common among America’s
lowest-earning workers, the report shows that from 2006 to 2013, bicycle
commuting more than doubled among workers making $75,000 or more—the highest
earnings category in the report—rising from 1.1 percent to 2.4 percent. For workers in the lowest earnings category
($0 to $24,999), bicycle commuting edged up from 3.1 percent in 2006 to 3.5
percent in 2013. And for middle earners (those making $25,000 to $74,999), the
amount of biking workers increased from 1.9 percent in 2006 to 2.9 percent in
2013.
Griswold suggested that the jump in bicycle commuting among higher earners could be at least partly explained by the rise of bike-share programs in cities nationwide.
In an earlier article based on the same census report, Griswold reported that the age cohort between 25 to 29 in cities with good public transit saw the steepest decline in automobile commuting.
Griswold's conclusion from these findings from the Census Bureau: Give people solid transportation options and chances are they’ll take them.
Labels: bicycle transportation, bike commuting, census
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