Is Portland the Cycling King?

Is Portland the Cycling King?
by the Antiplanner
Randal O’Toole

Last June, the Census Bureau was thrilled to announce that its annual survey of Americans revealed that Portland had the highest share of bicycle commuters of any city in the nation. According to the bureau’s 2005 survey, 3.5 percent of Portland commuters cycle to work. Portland is “like a Swiss city, with trains and bicycles everywhere,” exclaimed the director of the Census Bureau.

Soon after, a group called the Bicycle Transportation Alliance issued a challenge to employers in Portland (and elsewhere): which could persuade the greatest share of their employees to commute to work in September? More than 550 Portland employers who employed 118,000 full-time equivalent employees participated in the challenge. (This doesn’t include bike shops, whose employees are not very representative of the average commuter.)

Watch out for the streetcar and light-rail tracks.
Flickr photo by Salim Virji.

At the end of the month, a total of 6,906 people recorded that they rode to work at least once. On average, they rode to work about 10 out of 19 work days in September. That means that, on an average workday, 3.2 percent of people working for the companies that accepted the challenge cycled to work.

There are several reasons to think that 3.2 percent is higher than the average annual rate for Portland commuters overall. First, the data in the cycling challenge reports record the number of full-time equivalents, not the number of employees. In some smaller companies, there are so many part-time employees that they recorded more cyclists than FTEs, making it seem that more than 100 percent of their employees cycle to work. Thus, the percentage of employees, rather than full-time equivalents, who cycle would be less than 3.2.

Second, the companies and public agencies that got involved in the bicycle challenge may not be typical of all employers in Portland. Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, participated. So did the state Department of Environmental Quality. The State Department of Transportation did not.

Third, September usually offers pretty good cycling weather in Portland. Better than October, which is iffy. Certainly better than November, December, January, February, March, and April, which are usually pretty wet and (in December through February) cold. September is even likely to be better than May, and no worse than June. Only July and August are likely to provide better weather than September.

September 2007, in particular, had a rainstorm on the 4th and a record-breaking rainstorm on the 28th. But otherwise it was sunny most of the month, with just a trace of rain on a two or three other days. Even the most fair-weather cyclists should have been able to commute by bicycle at least 14 of the 19 workdays in the month. So, if 3.2 percent of Portland commuters cycled to work this September, it is likely to be much less over the course of the year.

So my guess is that 3.2 percent is pretty high for a year-round average. Why might the census data be wrong? The census form asks how people “usually” got to work. A US DOT survey (scroll down to exhibit 1-22) found that people who say they usually drive do drive more than 99 percent of the time. But people who say they usually cycle to work actually only cycle about three-fourths of the time.

Portland still may have more bicycle commuters than other cities. Long before it was chic to do so, I commuted there by bike for many years. Even if 3.5 percent of people commuted by bike, bicycles wouldn’t do much to relieve congestion. But it is likely that the real percentage is somewhere under 3.0 percent.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

posted from the Antiplanner by Randal O’Toole