Census: Portland and Oregon lead nation in biking to work

Summer bike traffic-14-14

(Photo © J. Maus)

New data released by the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey shows that the state of Oregon is a national leader in the number of people who ride a bicycle to work.

According to the new “Journey to Work” numbers, 6 percent of people in the city of Portland use a bicycle as their main mode of transportation to work. That’s the highest number of the top 70 largest cities in the country. Oregon also led the way in metro areas of all sizes with the Corvallis and Eugene areas taking the top two spots with 9.3 and 6 percent respectively.

Portland’s numbers represent a 0.2 percent jump from last year. According to analysis by the League of American Bicyclists, Census results show that the amount of people biking to work in Portland has increased 71 percent since 2005 and 231 percent since 2000.

The Census data also showed that 59 percent of Portlanders drive alone to work and 12 percent take public transportation. (That drive alone number is 2 percent lower than 2009.)

Statewide, the Census found that the 2.2 percent of Oregonians primarily bike to work while 4.2 percent take public transit and 72 percent drive.

Nationally, just a paltry 0.6 percent of workers use a bike as their primary way to get to work. “While this number represents nearly 40 percent growth since 2000,” says the League, “it also shows that we still have a lot of work to do in making our communities truly welcoming to bicyclists.”

Um yeah. I’ll say.

For another look at the numbers, check out the graph below created by Bikes Belong. It compares trends in bike commuting nationwide:

Interestingly, The Oregonian reported this morning that the Census numbers reflect how the Portland Metro-area is “car-dependent” and that commuters “love their cars… despite a big push to build bicycle lanes and light-rail lines in recent years.”

That framing of the data has, not surprisingly, led some predictable reactions both in the story comments and from local car advocates.

For more on this year’s numbers, including spreadsheets with data from other cities and an explanation of caution about Census data, see the League’s blog post.

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car owner and driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, feel free to contact me at @jonathan_maus on Twitter, via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a supporter.

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Joe
Joe
12 years ago

Awesome: Oh and its turns into a race for some at 5pm.. LOL 😉

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago

“Get up and tell us your name.’

“Hi, I’m Portland and… and .. I’m addicted to cars!”
{Sob} “I thought I kicked the habit: UGB, good transit, bike lanes every where. Just yeseterday I drove my SUV less than a ten of a mile to the post office and then just kept driving aimlessly … I don’t know why!” {Sob}

andycigarettes
andycigarettes
12 years ago

Yeah! Good news to see use is still on the rise. As far as the OREGONIAN article. Um. I absolutely HATE driving around in a car, especially downtown and try to do it as little as possible. Maybe they meant Portland, Maine?

Rainfish Umbrella
12 years ago

Oregon has adopted a more aggressive aproach to alternate forms of transportation in the last 20 yrs and it will take another 20 yrs to get to where city planners envisioned it would be today.

NF
NF
12 years ago

And they should be even more aggressive for the next 20 than they were for the last.

Katie A.
Katie A.
12 years ago

Yeah, Eugene!!!

Rainfish Umbrella
12 years ago

NF
And they should be even more aggressive for the next 20 than they were for the last.
Recommended 0

Hard to cut through all of that red tape, when commuters “love their cars”

9watts
9watts
12 years ago

Thanks for reporting this, Jonathan. I couldn’t get your last link to work.

9watts
9watts
12 years ago

growth in use of bikes not everywhere: Fort Collins, CO sees drop: http://tinyurl.com/3lqnvxv

Editz
Editz
12 years ago

Lots of folks in Eugene/Springfield riding…when they’ve not getting their bikes stolen.

BBrock
BBrock
12 years ago

What happened to Davis, CA at 22%? The League list shows them leading the country, with Boulder second and more than 9%. . . .

Joseph E
12 years ago
Reply to  BBrock

Davis is part of the Sacramento metro area, so it disappears in the data. If we could get data by city (unlikely, because this is a limited survey) I think Davis and a few other college towns like Goleta (UC Santa Barbara) would be way up there.

esther c
esther c
12 years ago

My bike is my main transportation except to work. I work 2 days a week. the other 5 my bike is it for about 80 or 90% of trips.

craig
craig
12 years ago

link to report

I’m confused. For this article, are you drawing from another source for the 6-percent Portland bike commute figure? Or can you help me find it in the report? I didn’t find a Portland-alone figure in the report, but did find, “Portland-
Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA Metro
Area, with a bicycle commuting
rate of 2.3 percent”.

If, as this article says,…

6 percent of people in the city of Portland use a bicycle as their main mode of transportation to work…

…then I would expect Portland to appear in the first snapshot above, “Top Ten Metro Areas for Commutes to Work by Bicycle” (report, table #3, page 10).

Also, this article says that…

The Census data also showed that […] 12 percent [of Portlanders] take public transportation…

…but the graph on page 8 of the reports shows only a figure for “Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton” with a transit commute rate of about 6%.

The article also says…

That drive alone number is 2 percent lower than 2009.

…but the report’s title Commuting in the
United States: 2009
indicates that this is 2009 data.

Adams Carroll (News Intern)
Reply to  craig

Craig,

I used mostly the Portland city numbers, not the Portland-Beaverton-Vancouver metro area numbers.

as for the other confusion. not sure. But this stuff is always a bit confusing. i’ll try to clear it up asap.

craig
craig
12 years ago

OK, thanks Jonathan. I was unable to find Portland city numbers in the report.

Chuck
Chuck
12 years ago
Reply to  craig

I noticed the same thing. To get a real, accurate depiction of commuting in Portland, you HAVE to include the surrounding areas, considering a large percentage of commuters are commuting to/from the suburbs. It’s not all that helpful to pull just the Portland numbers unless you’re looking for a predetermined outcome.

are
12 years ago
Reply to  Chuck

eventually that becomes a somewhat circular argument. people live in suburbs because the private automobile has made the commute seem practical. people who live in the urban core have made a different choice, and it is not meaningless to pull separate data to reflect that. in the not very distant future, it may become necessary for the suburbs to depopulate, or to develop their own economic centers, and in either case alternative transportation will likely increase as a mode share.

J-R
J-R
12 years ago

You do need to be careful about these data sets. As others have pointed out, some of the data is for the entire metro region. Specific city data will follow. Even here you need to select the correct tables from the Census; they provide data for both the place of work and separately for the place of residence. The Portland percentages quoted are from a different source. Finally, don’t forget that work trips represent only about one quarter of the total regional trips. To complicate things even more, some measures exclude truck trips and through trips.

Adams Carroll (News Intern)
Reply to  J-R

Thanks J-R,

I am sure that I drilled into the current data to get the Portland city numbers… But yes, the numbers are quite confusing… which I why folks just take them with a grain of salt to begin with.

Let’s wait for the City of Portland’s bike counts which should be coming out soon.

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago

From the “car advocate” website JM linked to in the article:
“And it seems that Portlanders like driving more than their LA counterparts.”

Her reasoning from that factoid seems to be:
) LA is the car capitol of the west coast,
) LA drivers enjoy driving less than we Portland auto drivers: we need MORE cars!

Perhaps LA drivers have so many automobiles crammed in to a limited road network that every trip is more odious than here. So the solution would be LESS cars not more.

Try selling that to the Consumer Generation.

middle of the road guy
middle of the road guy
12 years ago
Reply to  q`Tzal

Or the solution would be greater capacity.

esther c
esther c
12 years ago

I think it would be significant if 6% of actual Portlanders commuted by bike, even if it doesn’t include the surrounding communities. If we’re talking about Portland proper I see no reason to water down the actual cities number with the surrounding metro areas count.

craig
craig
12 years ago
Reply to  esther c

Agreed. Just trying to make sense of the census bureau’s report, at it is being discussed in this article

Rob Inerfeld
Rob Inerfeld
12 years ago

Jonathan — It’s really not that confusing. You reported metro-wide numbers for Eugene-Springfield and Corvallis and citywide numbers for Portland. The City of Eugene numbers are available on the online spreadsheet to which the League of American Bicyclists provides a link from their blog. According to the ACS, the percentage of people biking to work in Eugene is 8.6% which is third in the country after Davis and Boulder and tops in the nation for a city over 100,000 in population. Eugene also has significantly lower household median income than Boulder and Davis and a considerably lower percentage of college students as part of its overall population.

Dan O
Dan O
12 years ago

Cool! I used to live in Corvallis. I delivered papers by bike and rode to school in the ’70s there, and rode the streets to work in the ’80s (before bike lanes).

Ted Buehler
12 years ago

I can’t seem to find the info for Davis, CA. It was at 14% in 1990, the highest of any city in the US. Except maybe Key West, FL. It was probably still at that level, maybe a bit higher, in 2010.

While Davis has “gone downhill” — it was 28% in the 1980 census — it’s still the bikiest city in the US. Much bikier than Corvallis or Eugene.

http://daviswiki.org/Bicycle_History_Presentation?action=Files&do=view&target=33.JPG

Ted Buehler

Ted Buehler
12 years ago

Ah, here it is, on the LAB spreadsheet page. 22% for Davis, CA.

That’s up 50% from 2000.

Nicely done Davis!