The bad news about the latest city bike counts is that the number of people cycling in Portland didn’t make a big jump in 2024. The good news is that it didn’t go down. Not only that, but we are in a phase the City of Portland has officially dubbed “a new beginning” as ridership numbers continue to rebound after pandemic doldrums.
According the annual bike count report from the Portland Bureau of Transportation, cycling “remained steady” in 2024. Portland has done annual, manual bike counts for over 30 years, longer than any other American city. Between June and September of last year, 170 volunteers equipped with clipboards and pens fanned out to 318 locations across the city. They tallied every person who came by that was on a bicycle or some sort of micromobility vehicle (like a scooter, one-wheel, and so on).
Across 258 locations counted in both 2023 and 2024, there was an average, citywide increase in riders of just 0.9% over last year — 27,923 cyclists and 28,164 cyclists respectively. For perspective, across 119 sites that were counted in both 2016 and 2024, the number of people biking is down by about 40%.
The city split the count locations into eight distinct sectors (see map below). Of those districts, three tallied an increase and five had a decrease. East and North saw the biggest jump in ridership (relative to 2023) at 4.9%. Southwest meanwhile, saw 3.1% fewer riders than last year.
After nearly two decades of steady and strong growth in cycling between the early 1990s and 2015, Portland’s bike use has stymied in the past decade. To help describe what’s going on, PBOT has released a new narrative explanation. Here’s an excerpt from the count report:
Through our analysis of the data, the story of bicycling in Portland over the past 20 years can be told in four parts.
- The surge (pre-2016): Bicycle use steadily increased from the early 1990s. Portland set a national record for bicycle modeshare in a large city (population greater than 300,000) with 7.2% of people biking to work in 2014. The number of people bicycle commuting peaked in 2015 at 23,432 even though the mode split slipped slightly to 7% due to population growth.
- The ebb (2016–2019): Commuting by bike began a slow decline in both percent of trips and number of commuters after 2015 even as the city’s population grew.
- The pandemic (2020–2022): Biking, like all forms of transportation, decreased dramatically during the pandemic.
- A new beginning (2023–2024): Similar to other cities, the number of people biking has ticked up from pandemic-era lows and is holding steady as Portland continues its post-pandemic recovery.
The methodology of this count is open to critique, but PBOT would say the value is in its consistency over time. Similar to the quibbles cycling advocates have had with the U.S. Census bike commute mode share number, those concerns are balanced against the fact that the data offers a consistent view over a long time period.
On that note, PBOT gleans their numbers by counting each of the 318 different locations once between June 4th and September 26th (prime cycling season in Portland). The counts are done mid-week and volunteers count for a two-hour period during what PBOT says is the peak cycling hours of 4:00 to 6:00 pm or 7:00 to 9:00 am. (Given the vast increase in people working-from-home since the pandemic in 2020, you can see how this type of count would be impacted.)
PBOT then takes those two-hour counts and (“using a standard traffic engineering rubric”) makes an assumption that they account for about 20% of all daily bicycle trips at each location. That estimate is then considered to represent a full weekday count for each site.
In 2023, the first time PBOT volunteers made a separate tally for electric bikes, they counted 17% of people using bikes with motors. In 2024 that number dwindled to 9%. However, PBOT says the e-bike number is likely a significant undercount, “because newer e-bikes are increasingly designed with features that make them look similar to non-electric models.”
When you add e-bikes to other types of micromobility vehicles like e-scooters, one-wheels, and electric skateboards, that category made up 14% of all trips counted in 2024.
PBOT’s count report also includes insights on the shared bike and scooter programs known as Biketown, which currently consists of 2,350 e-bikes and 3,500 e-scooters citywide. Ridership on both modes has rebounded well since the pandemic in 2020, but PBOT reports a trouble decline in Biketown ridership, which saw a 15% decrease in 2023.
PBOT says the decline in Biketown e-bike ridership is likely due to a number of factors (riders have complained about poorly maintained bikes, and the system service area has expanded without a commensurate increase in bikes), but that the bulk of the decrease is due to changes in their Biketown for All program for low-income riders. As I reported in May, PBOT scaled back the program to cut costs. The city adjusted the program’s eligibility requirements and switched from providing unlimited, free 60-minute trips to providing a $10 credit per month with rides billed at five cents per minute. “The change was made in response to rising costs that threatened the financial stability of the program, which had grown from 169 users in 2020 to 4,270 when the change was implemented,” PBOT writes in the report. Likely as a result of those changes, PBOT has seen Biketown for All use decrease by 21% in 2024.
Despite the relatively flat ridership numbers, PBOT says their are reasons for optimism going forward. In the conclusion of the report, they say the city’s bike network is “more robust and far reaching than it was a decade ago when Portland was setting national records for biking” (but is that enough to counterbalance the rise in drivers and associated erosion of street safety?). PBOT also points to more automated enforcement, major new bike lane maintenance investments, and a new form of city leadership that, “promises fresh ideas and more collaborative city operations,” as reasons for a brighter bicycling future.
The report ends with a bit of editorializing and a call to action:
“Portland can be a world-class bicycle city, but only if we’re committed to making it that way. Prevailing U.S. policy, funding mechanisms, and culture favors less travel choice, more car dependence, rising vehicle traffic, and more traffic fatalities. These outcomes are not flukes; they’re consequences. But Portland is making different choices. We can change for the better. And change is necessary for a brighter, more bikeable future.”
Read the full report here.
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It’s interesting, one would like to believe PBOT’s numbers but can we really? Does someone audit them to verify veracity?
After learning from one of the City staff people who worked on the more recent City numbers how they massaged and cherry picked the numbers used to show downtown in a better light than it really is, makes me wonder about PBOT.
I noticed several cycling enthusiasts/activists advertising their bike count sites and urging people to come by on social media. These sites were both in inner SE.
I don’t know that PBOT has any real incentive to artificially boost cycling numbers these days. Recent leadership and council alliances don’t indicate a huge pro-bike agenda, and upcoming federal funding will likely be “For Car and Truck Use Only!”. While I am always skeptical when it comes to PBOT, there is no advantage to inflating bike numbers. We’re not getting “game changing” money from D.C. for meaningful infrastructure in the near future.
The number of people killed by car drivers annually in Portland has doubled vs. two decades ago. It shouldn’t be that surprising that people dislike the experience of being on a bike near cars.
Interestingly, far more people are being killed in cars than on bikes, and yet the popularity of being in a car doesn’t seem to have taken a hit.
I think that people generally feel like they have more control over their own safety when they are driving. Even if it is statistically dangerous, if feels safe, which is really what matters.
Not interesting. The absolute number of deaths is irrelevant.
Predictably droll. As you would well know, the immediate vulnerability to injury for a bicyclist or pedestrian on the roadways to a collision is far greater than the vulnerability of an auto user in a collision at the same speed, notwithstanding the horribly high number of fatalities in our city of people in automobiles.
The scourge of vehicular violence in Portland — particularly in the past decade as deaths on our roads have risen precipitously — perpetuated by the regularly experienced unsafe driving practices by auto users gives pause to anyone walking or rolling about where and how often they can walk or ride without fear of conflict with automobiles.
Regarding the ‘e-bike undercount’ [“However, PBOT says the e-bike number is likely a significant undercount, “because newer e-bikes are increasingly designed with features that make them look similar to non-electric models.”] Perhaps the count program’s administrator should consider adding a new section for the annual volunteer training ‘know your e-bike’? Kidda like those 2D cards / posters handed out to anti aircraft crews in WW2 to better understand which aeroplane they were witnessing.
I wonder if some of this isn’t also due to their methodolgy, iirc the count locations are primarily located along greenways but I think folks on e bikes are often more confident riding on streets like hawthorne and division where there aren’t counting stations. If I am remembering correctly, some data from biketown seemed to show that pattern.
Great point Kyle. One concern I have with these bike counts is that they reflect traditional bike riding patterns and I worry they don’t reflect the new ways bicycles are used — especially since Covid and with more folks having e-bikes. I realize the value of these counts is that they look at the same location over many years, but it’s also a drawback if those locations don’t reflect current riding patterns. Then again, I assume/hope that the Count planners are smart enough to be shifting locations so that going forward we do have new spots that reflect modern bike behaviors.
JM, does Portland use infrared readers as well, to verify counts? Our city uses them all over town at certain strategic points, about 10-12 readers, very nondescript, they look like outdoor electrical outlets or those vertical pipes that indicate a local natural gas line, all painted greenish-grey with no other markings. They monitor passing walkers and riders 24/7/365 in all weather, but distinguish between them by their passing speed. The readers send out signals much like cell phones. Very useful for seasonal variations and for users (both riders and runners) who are out and about at 3 am.
The 2030 Bike Plan, for all its optimism, introduced very strange criteria for designating bikeways in the TSP. If you read the definitions of how each functional classification for bikes is made, you’ll find the clauses:
for the Major City Bikeway. This makes it more difficult for streets to be designated as Major City Bikeways in the TSP, which in turn makes it more difficult for bike lane projects to get off the ground. No other mode is subject to this kind of stringent analysis relative to other modes before being designated any particular way in the TSP.
Evidently, the TSP designations probably helped in the construction of the greenway system, but I think they also generally have precluded non-greenway bikeway construction. Having the bikeway TSP definitions be in line with all the other modes would make it easier to designate the shortest, flattest, and most interesting routes between places as future priority bikeways and that would help in getting those bikeways built.
I don’t think it’s a shock that bike ridership has declined in the years since these criteria were introduced, and hopefully the next iteration of the TSP can change these definitions.