Can you jump 269%? The 'Burgh did

Wednesday, 28 September 2011 10:07

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

Pittsburgh has made some more great fossil-free news.

Eric “Erok” Boerer of BikePGH informed me today that, since 2000, Pittsburgh’s bicycle commuter numbers are up 269 percent.

bikingwalking We made the second largest jump in bike commuters out of the largest U.S. cities and are ranked 13th. To see the whole post and that chart, click here.

This info is courtesy of the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey for 2010.

Maybe even more exciting in the big picture is how we rank as a car-free commuter city.

When considering biking and walking as the primary commute (see chart above), Pittsburgh is in 4th place at about 12.4%, behind San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Boston.

Despite the Port Authority cuts, when you add transit to the mix, we rank 7th in the country.

30.4% of Pittsburghers get to their job primarily without using a car. Walkabout would guess that the majority of them leave their Spandex at home for that.

The folks at BikePGH relate that they look specifically to find out the primary way Pittsburgh residents get to their jobs.

They continue: “For instance, if you take the bus to your job, but ride a bicycle the rest of the time, you are counted as ‘transit.’ If you ride a bicycle 3 days and drive 2 days, you are counted as ‘bicycle.’ And if you have no job, are under 16, or are a student, well you’re just not counted.

“Back in 2000, about 0.4% of Pittsburghers chose the bicycle as their primary way to get to work. Today, we’re up to about 1.6% – about the level that Portland, Oregon was 10 years ago. This ranks us as the 13th highest bicycle commuter rate in the nation.

“According to the League of American Bicyclists, who has done even more numbers crunching, since 2005, the 38 Bicycle Friendly Communities among the 70 largest cities saw a 95 percent average increase in bicycle commuting. In contrast, the 32 non-Bicycle Friendly Communities (among the largest 70) grew 46 percent. Since 2000, large Bicycle Friendly Communities grew 78 percent, compared to 55 percent for large non-BFCs. The League crunched the numbers for the increase in bike commuting over the past 1, 5 and 10 years."

The League of American Bicyclists named Pittsburgh a “Bronze Bike-Friendly Community” in May of 2010.