The Portland Bureau of Transportation just released their latest Bicycle Count Report and the numbers could be read as a case of “no news is good news.” Overall, PBOT counted 1% more bicycle riders on streets citywide compared to one year ago. While it’s good we’re holding steady and have pedaled out of the decline that happened between 2016 and 2022, keep in mind we’re still down about 40% from our mid-2010s peak.
PBOT’s bike counts are widely respected for their consistency over time as they’ve fanned out along bikeways with clipboards in hand for over three decades. The counts were tallied by 150 trained volunteers who posted up at 342 locations (the most ever) between June and September of last year. PBOT splits the city up into eight geographic sectors (see map below).
In 2025, none of those sectors posted double-digit growth. The largest increases came from East (all areas east of I-205) and Southwest (excluding areas in the City Center) where counts showed 6.6% and 6.0% growth compared to 2024. Three sectors showed negative growth. North (west of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd) was down 4.2% and Northwest (excluding areas in the City Center) and South showed significant declines with a 12.9% and 16.8% decrease respectively.
Interestingly, PBOT mentioned in the report that the nearly 17% decrease in South might be due in part to it being home to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, which was the site of numerous protests.
The one group that really has something to celebrate with the 2025 counts are electric bike retailers. PBOT reports that nearly one in four people on bikes in Portland are riding an e-bike. That’s the highest number counted since they began counting e-bikes in 2023 (note that this number should be taken with a grain of salt given inherent difficulties of identifying e-bikes versus acoustic bikes). Another fun e-bike fact in the report is that one-third of women counted were using them, compared to 22% of men.
When it comes to shared micromobility, the report revealed large growth in e-scooter use and the second straight year of decline in Biketown riders.
Amid the relatively “meh” news about bike ridership, the PBOT report included a section about how our city — once the undisputed “Bicycle Capital of America!” — remains full of “enthusiasm” for all things bicycle. Specifically, PBOT mentioned the bike bus movement. Here’s a snip from the report:
“The energy and enthusiasm around bike buses—as well as their leaders’ demands for network improvements—provide an insight to the desire parents and children have for an environment that fosters safe and comfortable conditions for biking for people of all ages and abilities. Portland has the policies, plans and understanding of how to create conditions that make bicycling more attractive than driving for most short trips. Lacking are the resources to make it happen.”
For more insights, check out the full report, which you can download from PBOT’s bike counts website.
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I really wonder about PBOT methodology with these bike counts, and the combination of post-pandemic work from home and widespread ebike adoption haven’t changed transportation patterns in ways that lead to a systematic undercounting.
My basic theory is:
Because of all those changes, even though bicycle commuting seems like it has convincingly decreased post-pandemic and never recovered, I suspect that actually there are a lot of bicycle trips that replaced commutes which are just not being counted because they are from home to school or restaurant or whatever, and either don’t occur on a greenway or even if a majority of the trip is on a greenway, they don’t pass a counting site.
Of course, if they were to starting counting trips that were occuring off greenways, they would maybe have to build some daggone bicycle infrastructure outside the greenway system and then maybe deal with crabby business owners complaining about parking being taken away and a bunch of other headaches that PBOT doesn’t seem to have much appetite to actually take on.