Bike riding is falling in Portland

Overall, Portland bicycle traffic in 2022 dropped more than a third compared to 2019, to levels not seen since approximately 2005-2006 (Table 1). This is based on a comparison of people counted at the 184 locations that were counted in both 2022 and 2019. Volunteers recorded 17,579 people biking at those 184 locations in 2022, a 37% drop from the 27,782 counted at the same locations in 2019.  This reversion to earlier and lower volumes is also reflected in bicycle commute data, as well as for driving, walking, and using transit to commute. (Tables 5-6)  Looking at data from 2013-2019 we see that bicycling remained relatively flat between 2013 and 2016. However, bicycle counts dropped significantly between 2016 and 2019. This drop is also reflected in census commute data.

And it wasn’t all Covid:

While 2022 data is anomalously low, it is also a continuation of a trend of declining bicycle use in Portland. Both annual count data and Census data demonstrates that bicycle use in Portland peaked in the 2013-2015 period and has been declining since.

Here is the report, here is one abbreviated source.  Via Glenn Mercer.

Call me contrarian, but I have never been convinced that bicycles have a promising economic future in a truly Pigouvian city.  And as a side point, how popular would bicycles be if they were embedded with software, requiring each bicycle to respect the law, stop at red lights, and so on?

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