Some high-stakes political games are being played out in Washington, D.C., these days. Billions are at stake. Institutions are at stake. Funding for all sorts of programs, including transportation programs are at stake.
It’s time for bicycling advocates currently convening in Washington to be very careful as they make the case for increasing or preserving support for the bike. Don’t overstate the case. It’s not that strong.
Let’s consider the bike and Federal support.
There has been a push to use alternative means of transportation for decades in this country. People from environmentalists, to economists, to health advocates, to just about every group of progressive thinkers have extolled the virtues of the use of mass transit and non-motorized vehicles.
Progress has been made, but slowly.
Frequently bicycle advocates in cities from Portland to New York have touted the increase in bicycle commuting as a rationale for directing more of our increasingly scarce public resources to improving the cycling infrastructure. See below the postings about major breakthroughs in Los Angeles and San Diego.
Some of the numbers used by these advocates to show the increase in bicycling in their cities and nationally are rather impressive. Places like Portland, San Francisco, even Oakland, New York City and many others have touted the increases that they have experienced in bicycle commuting.
Yet when you look at the big picture, the numbers are not nearly so enthralling. In fact, if you look at the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest numbers they are positively depressing, and these are statistics touted by the League of American Bicyclists. It turns out that nationally a very small percentage of commuters use anything but a single person occupied vehicle, and the numbers have not been increasing dramatically.
Nationally less than one percent of all commutes are by bike. Even in the 70 largest cities it is only a hair over one percent. Even though the absolute number of bike commuters increased by 44% from 2000 to 2009, it didn’t increase at all between 2008 and 2009.
Portland, Oregon, the city with the largest proportion of bicycling commuters only rang up 5.8%, increasing 77% from ‘00 to’09, but actually decreasing from ‘09 to ‘09.
Take San Luis Obispo County. According to a fascinating graphical mapping of the Census Bureau’s data, 7.2% of all commuters us bicycle, walk or take public transit. Bicycles make up only 1.8%. No matter how fast bicycle commuting may be growing in relative terms, it is minuscule around here.
Even in San Francisco bicycles are only 2.6% of all commuters.
There is a Bicycle Summit opening in a day or so in Washington, D.C., and their main agenda seems to be to increase — or at least hold the line — on Federal support for bicycling infrastructure.
A very worthy goal. But keep in mind that the yahoos in Congress also have access to the same data we have. When less than one in thirty people in a relatively major bicycling center use the bike to commute, it will not be regarded as a particularly large constituency.
The message here is: don’t oversell bicycling. The numbers can be used against us.
