Some disjointed thoughts about bike commuting rates and how we get them

By On January 21, 2011 · 8 Comments
  1. In November 2010, I wrote that Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, have a higher percentage of workers (16 and older) commuting to work by bicycle.
  2. Yesterday, I updated an article about how the frequency of women in Chicago bicycling to work is decreasing.
  3. Today, I started updating the November Minnesota article to include the 2007-2009 3-year estimates from the American Community Survey (which shows that bicycling to work is growing faster in Minneapolis than Chicago). View the rudimentary spreadsheet. Bottom line: MPLS jumped from 3.55% bike mode share to 4.14% and Chicago only went from 1.04% to 1.13% (but again, only counting employed people!). Can we get some recession job statistics?
  4. Unemployment rate in Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI MSA is 6.5%; Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI MSA is 9.0%. See the table on Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But now I must pause and look at what I’m analyzing.

Someone pointed out in the comments on Chicago bicycling (and working) women that the sample size is low and the margin of error high meaning it’s hard to make accurate interpretations of the change in ridership from year to year. He suggested increasing the sample size.

Add this to the fact that the Census Bureau only collects data on trips to WORK and not everywhere else that people go daily. In this recession, fewer people are working. In fact, perhaps women lost their jobs more frequently than men. That could perhaps explain the drop in women bicycling to work. To increase the number of women bicycling to work, perhaps we just need to find more jobs for women. See points 3 and 4 above for evidence on the number of people who bicycle for transportation that we’re not counting.

After thinking these things over, my point is that gauging a city’s ridership based on Census Bureau home to work data is insufficient.

Array

If these Phoenix bike riders aren’t going to work, they aren’t being counted.

To move from a bicycle subculture to a bicycle culture, we’ll need to know when we get there. We need a better picture on who is riding and for what purpose. CMAP rarely performs their household transportation survey (which gathers data on all trips on all modes and in many counties) and when they do, they don’t single out cities. In essence, Chicago doesn’t know where or why people are riding their bicycles (except for the limited and noisy information the Census or American Community Survey provides) – we have no good data!

Both New York City, New York, and Portland, Oregon, methodically perform bicycle counts annually. Both cities also count ridership on their bridges: Portland has at least 5 to count, NYC has over 10 (also called a screenline count). They can report how many people are riding bikes on the street, blind to their trip purpose and destination. It’s easy to note changes in ridership when you count all trips over work trips.

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  • http://westnorth.com/ Payton

    Jan Gehl points out that cities (really, state DOTs) spend a lot of time and effort counting cars but almost none counting pedestrians. That’s why WPB invested in a mode survey — so that we could better understand how people got around within the neighborhood, and also point out that a lot of people don’t drive. There are a lot of other valid criticisms of using the Census for looking at trips that you can find elsewhere.

    • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

      I think the Chicago Departments of Public Health and Transportation should request that CMAP distinguish households within Cook County as being within or without the City of Chicago limits.

      Did you know that CDOT and Office of Emergency Management and Communication (OEMC) have some pedestrian counts of the loop, train stations, River North, and North Michigan Avenue? Look it up here.

  • Allan

    For alot of people, their trip to work is their longest regular trip, which means it is the hardest to cycle. perhaps counting these trips is seriously undercounting of mode share

    • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

      It is seriously undercounting mode share. It’s only counting mode share for a single trip purpose. But many travel surveys divide trip making into six or more trip purposes.

      In CMAP’s 2009 travel survey, Cook County households make 9.1 trips per day. And 50% of Cook County households have 1-2 residents. If 2 people are making 4 trips per day for work purposes, what are the purposes of the majority (5.1) of their other trips?

  • Michael Alvino

    Good points all around. Just wanted to offer a response to your point regarding women losing jobs. It appears to be the opposite, with unemployment disproportionately affecting men who are over-represented in industries like manufacturing and construction, while women are more likely to work in stable industries like education and healthcare.

    http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/the-mancession/

    That said, I don’t have a reasonable explanation for why rates of women cycling to work would drop.

    • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

      Thanks for the link.

      Do you know or more recent data?

      So all these questions should lead to demands for more and better data.

      • Michael Alvino

        Here is an article just published today which is showing a different trend. Men, it would appear, are finding work as the private sector resumes hiring. However, now state and local governments are cutting jobs which disproportionately affects women.

        http://www.slate.com/id/2282340/

  • http://twitter.com/#!/Justinhaugens Justin Haugens

    Also, how does one answer the survey if they ride their bike and drive to work?