“Transportation is the lifeblood of a city”

Thursday the Mayor’s office in partnership with Green Building Allinace (GBA) and Envision Downtown released the initial results of Pittsburgh’s first regional commuter survey, Make My Trip Count.

We need to study the best ways of structuring every means of transportation — be they streets, public transit, sidewalks or bike lanes — and these survey results will help put us on that path together,

– Mayor Bill Peduto

The information shows a real complexity commutes in Pittsburgh with a range of destinations and modes of transportation selected. It provides a neat picture of how people in and around the county are getting around.

Of note: The Make My Trip Count survey looked at how people made individual trips to and from the office.  Compared to traditional transportation surveys that typically focus on primary mode, this approach allowed the survey to gather a more complete understanding of people’s commutes because it accounted for the obvious truth that people are multimodal by nature.

Regionally, the survey’s 20,710 results show that less than half of the region’s commute trips are made by driving alone – which is excellent. And that on the regional level, 4.2% of work trips are made by bike and 4.3% are made by foot – great. Also interesting that the majority (63%) of respondents were women.

Then, if you drill down to the responses given by residents in City of Pittsburgh zip codes – about 9,200 responses – we see a pretty exciting numbers; that 8.6% of commute trips are made by bike! 9.3% were by foot, and 39.6% included some form of public transit (meaning just 33% of people drive by themselves). Not a bad first glimpse at the city-specific data. We’ll be able to give more analysis as GBA makes more of the survey data available.

Check out this handy infographic created by GBA for more information and a visual representation of the products of the survey.

Thanks to all of you who participated in the survey! We are proud to have been one of 12 Make My Trip Count collaborating organizations. Keep an eye out on the BikePGH blog and social media for further information. We can’t wait to release more detailed survey results.

Share your thoughts on social media using @BikePGH and #MMTC!

Sign up for Bike Pittsburgh’s newsletter, The Messenger, to get the latest news on events, bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and fun, delivered straight to your inbox. Twice monthly emails, no spam.