Everywhere is biking more, except Portland
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Pandemic-era cycling fever appears to be sticking, with the number of average daily bike trips per 1,000 people increasing in almost every major U.S. metro area between 2019-2022.
- Except in Portland — which ranked next-to-last in growth (ahead only of Fresno in 2022) for two years in a row.
What's happening: Those numbers come from a new report by StreetLight Data, which uses GPS and other location data to measure transportation patterns in urban areas.
Why it matters: Portland has also dropped overall in daily bike trips per capita — from third nationally in 2019 to eighth last year — as "other metros invested further" in increasing biking, per the report.
What they're saying: "Eighth is still pretty impressive. But I think we're seeing the limits of our underfunded bikeways," Kiel Johnson, a board member of BikeLoud PDX, tells Axios.
Catch up quick: Two years ago, bike advocates were angered when transportation officials decided not to add protected bike lanes along SE Hawthorne during a major remake of the popular commercial street.
- This summer, Portland Bureau of Transportation officials quietly developed a plan to eliminate the protected bike lane on SW Broadway through downtown — but had to backpedal after an angry reaction when the plans were leaked last month.
Meanwhile, Joel Holly, an active cyclist who lives east of 82nd, says the biking gets worse the further you get from central Portland, especially for inexperienced riders or those who don't "know the route or feel okay riding through some kind of sketchy spots."
The big picture: Portland's longtime goal has been to have at least 25% of all trips be by bike by 2030.
Zoom out: While Portland's growth in cycling fell, nationally the annual average for daily bike trips grew 37% between 2019-2022.
- Bigger cities beat us. New York, San Francisco and Chicago all passed Portland for daily rides per capita.
Driving the news: In some big cities, urban bike share programs exploded in popularity during the pandemic, making two-wheelers easier to access.
- And New York, which now tops the list for bike trips per capita, has seen a boom in "deliveristas," who crisscross the city with hungry denizens' Grubhub and Uber Eats orders.
The bottom line: After pandemic-era growth, bike activity nationally flattened between 2021 and 2022.
- The StreetLight report called this a "warning that continued investment in safety-focused active transportation infrastructure … will be critical to re-animating growth."