Recently, there was some news about how many people commute by bicycle. For instance, here’s a Portland, Oregonian article: Bike commuting surges in Portland, Census finds
I’m having a problem finding the US Census report on this. I’ve gone to the Census site, but for the life of me, cannot find the commuting data broken down by cities or metropolitan areas. Anyone help?
They may not have analyzed that data by city or metro area. If you search the Census website you may be able to get the raw data and analyze it yourself.
Here you go.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/010230.html
Thanks for link ghardester, but it seems that release is for the survey from a few years ago.
I think you’re right, Bijou Drains, in that the Census didn’t list that info by city. Instead, the Oregonian must have pulled that info out “by hand” as it were. That is, they looked up the data for all 30 largest cities and compiled their own list. But I suppose that’s what interns are made for…
But I did find where the data is on the Census site. And I found that the Oregonian made a slight mistake in their article. The number for Portland is 6.0%, not 6.4%.
BTW, on googling for this, I found a similar article from the Philly paper claiming they had the highest bicycle commuting percentage among big cities. Technically, they weren’t wrong – they were just looking at the 10 biggest cities, not the 30 biggest.
Been looking at other cities to see if any have a higher percentage than Portland. So far I’ve only found Eugene OR at 8.0% and Cambridge MA at 6.3%, although Berkeley comes close at 5.7%. All those are university cities, so it’s no surprise they are high in this category.
Boston seems to be the big city with the highest rate of walking commuters (14.3%). The only places I can find with higher rates are university cities: Cambridge MA (25.5!), Berkeley (19.9), and Ann Arbor MI (14.5).