It’s no secret that bicycle ridership in Portland has decreased in recent times; however simply how a lot was anybody’s guess. Fortunately the Portland Bureau of Transportation simply launched their first bicycle depend report since 2014.
The excellent news is we now have extra knowledge to assist us perceive biking traits within the metropolis. The dangerous information is, based mostly on PBOT’s 2022 counts, biking in Portland has dropped again to ranges not seen since 2006. “{That a} decline is going on in each numbers of individuals bicycling and in mode cut up is plain. Why it’s taking place is troublesome to find out,” states the report.
To get their numbers, PBOT relied on a tried-and-true technique they’ve used for about three a long time: a military of volunteers with clipboards who depend each bicycle rider they see at tons of of places citywide over a two-hour interval. They then extrapolate these counts to give you a day by day visitors quantity. Along with these 105 volunteer counts (at 234 places), PBOT used automated counts from fastened pneumatic hoses at 74 places. The ultimate ingredient are commute-to-work survey knowledge collected by the U.S. Census.
As an alternative of sharing a uncooked quantity from their 2022 depend, PBOT has determined to match the info of three, four-year time intervals: 2013 to 2016, 2016 to 2019, and 2019 to 2022. These three intervals take us from our plateau (0.5% improve), the start of the downward decline (10% lower citywide), after which the cliff of the ultimate interval when PBOT says bicycling dropped by 34.9% between 2019 and 2022.
To place a finer level on the decline since 2019, simply 9 years in the past (in 2013) PBOT says there have been 3,478 individuals driving bikes within the central metropolis. In the course of the counts final summer time, there have been simply 1,122 individuals on bikes — a forty five.9% drop. Throughout 184 depend places, PBOT tallied 17,579 individuals biking in 2022, a 37% drop from the 27,782 counted on the similar places in 2019.
In line with the Census, Portland’s bike-to-work share plummeted to only 2.8% in 2021 — down by virtually half from the 5.4% in 2020 and properly off our nation-leading peak of seven.2% in 2014. That Census quantity has lengthy been criticized as a result of it focuses solely on the work journey and the dearth of belief within the Census extra broadly in recent times makes its knowledge much more suspect. Nevertheless it stays an vital tally due to its longevity and its affect on federal funding and coverage selections.
Whereas this information is deflating, a minimum of we’re not alone. All different large U.S. cities have seen related declines. And even at 2.8% we’re nonetheless tops.
The Census numbers additionally mirror Portland’s personal counts, which have proven a gentle decline since 2014. To this point, PBOT says they don’t know why that is taking place.
Within the report, PBOT particulars how they’ve continued to construct out town’s bikeway community (77 of it miles since 2014), the vast majority of which have been both neighborhood greenways, protected bike lanes or off-street paths. Right here’s PBOT making their case that the biking drop isn’t due to dangerous infrastructure:
“It’s simple to argue that Portland’s bikeway community is of upper high quality and reaches into extra components of town than in 2014- 2015 when bicycle commute mode cut up and the variety of individuals biking to work peaked. Regardless of these efforts, bicycle use—as mirrored in each commute knowledge and town’s annual counts— has continued to drop. The pandemic can clarify a lot of the current, precipitous drop in biking, but it surely doesn’t clarify the downward pattern earlier than 2020.”
The report additionally breaks the counts down by geographic space, gender, and helmet use.
Not shocking, the world with the bottom common variety of riders was east of I-205 and the world with the very best common was southeast Portland. That lack of ridership in east Portland is a large downside for PBOT — particularly since they’ve spent many tens of millions in recent times putting in new bike infrastructure. The dearth of individuals utilizing the bikeways simply fuels the anti-bike fires and the earlier we get people on two wheels the higher (which is why I’m satisfied the reply is to drop 1,000 or so new Biketown bikes east of I-205).
Maybe constructing on the case that public security considerations are top-of-mind for many individuals when it comes their option to journey a motorcycle, the counts revealed the primary vital drop in 13 years within the variety of riders who have been recognized as girls. Simply 28% of motorcycle riders counted citywide have been recognized as girls, down from the standard 31-32%. Volunteers counted the fewest riders marked down as girls, 18%, and the bottom price of helmet use, 56%, in east Portland.
To construct again Portland’s once-vaunted base of motorcycle riders will take time and a concentrated effort to vary the narrative (and the truth) about security. As I shared yesterday in our annual accounting of visitors deaths, the vulnerability felt by all bike riders relating to their private security can simply trump any excellent news about new infrastructure. Issues like incentives and public occasions to construct neighborhood have been on the basis of Portland’s rise as a biking capitol and we’d be sensible to maintain these going as properly.
One attention-grabbing factor I observed just lately in visitors fatality knowledge is that when extra individuals biked in Portland, so much fewer individuals died. Simply 20 individuals died whereas utilizing Portland roads in 2008 when our bicycling charges made an enormous leap. And the current rise in visitors fatalities started in 2014, the identical 12 months Portland’s bicycling charges started to fall.
Study extra about PBOT’s bike counts on their web site and obtain a PDF of the 2022 Bike Depend Report right here.
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