Biking to Work: 2008
Bike commuting is rising dramatically in Portland, Oregon, according to 2008 Census data analyzed by Impresa Consulting. Portland is the number one bike commuting city out of the top 50 U.S. cities, where two percent of work trips--about 22,000 trips total--are made by bike commuters. These numbers are for the seven-county Portland metropolitan area; numbers are much higher for just the City of Portland, with bike commuting accounting for 6.4 percent of all work travel.
Bike commuting increased by 52 percent in the City of Portland from 2007 to 2008. Cycling to work in Portland has more than tripled since 2000. Nationwide, about 786,000 trips a day are made by bike commuters, up 60 percent from the 488,000 workers commuting by bike in 2000. Data come from the 2008 American Community Survey, an annual survey conducted by the Census Bureau that asks about the primary mode of transportation a worker uses for daily commuting. Data in this study compare federally defined metropolitan areas that include both central cities and their surrounding suburban areas. The survey asks about "primary means" of traveling to work, which means that workers who ride bikes just once or twice a week, or those that stay home to work rather than commute, are not included in the data.
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