The City of Portland Auditor’s Office has released its seventeenth annual Resident and Business Surveys. The lengthy survey includes an assessment of all City services, including the Office of Transportation.
The results show a 1% increase in bike commute mode share over last year and a major dip in the perception of bicycle safety (more details below).
According to Robert Cowan, a public information staffer at the Auditor’s Office, the survey was sent out on August 3rd of this year and 20,400 randomly selected people from 75 different neighborhoods responded to the survey. All responses were in by September 10th.
Here’s how people responded to the question about bike safety.
In general, how do you rate the streets in your neighborhood on the safety of bicycles?
- Very good – 7%
- Good – 40%
- Neither – 27%
- Bad – 19%
- Very bad – 8% (in SW it was 14%)
The 47% of Portlanders that responded with “Very good” or “Good” is the lowest since 2002 and represents a 7% decline over last year, the largest dip since the question was first asked (in 2000).
As a side note, it might be important to consider that on August 17th, a man tried to intentionally run-down a cyclist in SE Portland. This road rage case (full coverage here) received considerable media attention and might have influenced some responses.
The survey also asked residents about their commuting habits.
If you work outside of your home, what mode of transportation do you usually use to get to and from work? [Here are the results of the folks who answered “bicycle”].
- SW – 3%
- NW/Downtown – 4%
- North – 6%
- Inner NE – 12%
- Central NE – 4%
- SE – 10%
- East – 1%
- City Total – 6%
This number has increased one percentage point since last year.
In the next few weeks, the Auditor’s office will release neighborhood-by-neighborhood breakdowns of the survey results.
To download the complete survey as a PDF and learn more about the methodology, visit the Auditor’s website.