BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Is that the raw # of commuters, or # per capita?

@ALMKLM - don't know for sure. Heard the news over a conference call, and am short of details at present. Found a partial confirmation http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf

but have not yet mined the data.

From 100 to 269, mebbe?

I found this, "Commuting Characteristics by Sex, 2010. Edit post. This table - once you query for the Geographic Location of "Pittsburgh" has the bicycle info...

The Estimate is 1.6% of the population, with a standard deviation of 0.6% - which means that this information is ridiculously useless.

Dug up the 2000 Census, "Journey to Work" data.

In 2000, bicycling commuters were at 0.4% with a value of 627 and no stated estimate or standard deviation for the information.

Bike use has almost quadrupled in the last decade? Seems about right. From "You see a bike every once in a while" to "You see one or two on the way to work.

It it triples or quadruples again in the next decade, then we've really got something going.

below is the 2009 data showing that pittsburgh saw a 206% rise since 2000.

we were at 1.4% last year, this year we're at 1.6%. i'll be making a new chart this year.

you can see the past 4 years data from this link

http://bike-pgh.org/blog/2010/10/01/pittsburgh-sees-206-rise-in-bicycle-commuting-since-2000-fourth-largest-increase-in-the-country/

also, i think this data is useless as far as getting a "hard number" on how many people commute by bike, but what it does do is give insight into trends, both here and across the country, and how we compare with other cities.

It is, really, the best data available, although flawed. for instance, it completely ignores multi modal people. or people that commute by car 3 days a week and by bike 2 days a week, among other flaws. but again, it's the best, most consistent data that we got.

Not to mention people that were too lazy to fill out their census forms...

this wasn't attached to the census forms. they used to have a "long form" to get this type of data. they got rid of that, so that everyone now has the same form, and replaced it with the yearly American Community Survey, which is where this data comes from.

It's not that great for judging trends if the std. deviation is as large as sloaps said. I don't want to be a naysayer and I hope bike commuting is on the rise but I think it's best to be cautious about asserting something the data doesn't really support.

Point taken on the huge std. deviation. However, it's in the comparables that make the data most interesting. All the other cities evaluated have the same (or at lease similar) std. deviations. So, Philadelphia (City) has a higher percentage of bike commuters than we do. But, we've apparently increase by 250 percent or more since 2000. Even with the flaws in the data, the trends and the comparables say SOMETHING. And, this counts only City residents. Suburbanites travelling into the City are not included. So, where Central City Philadelphia has a higher residential volume than our downtown/close in neighborhoods (perhaps) Pittsburgh's compactness means we have undercounted all the folks coming in from Bellevue, Millvale, Regent Square and all those other "bikeable" suburbs.

I like the data, and I plan to use it. I hope no elected officials ask me to drill down to the scientific accuracy or methodology of the Study. "US Census Bureau says...." will be my standard response to any such inquiries.

"I hope no elected officials ask me to drill down to the scientific accuracy or methodology of the Study."

I think you're perfectly safe.

Exactly - also consider the data has been fairly consistent year after year. I think it tends to underestimate the number (i don't believe students are included because they don't commute to a job) but like sara said, they make for decent comparables

Sara, how are the counts looking compared to previous years?

Count tallies are still rolling in. We'll have a summary in a couple of days.

If I remember, the count last year was done during a spate of unusually fair weather (y, n?) Simple weather could jar the results, will be interesting.

it was an incredibly nice day when i did my count

Here is a chart in the Atlantic using these stats.

YES!

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2011/09/substantial-increases-bike-ridership-across-nation/161/

Thanks for linking to that Erok, As I understand it, that is the growth 2000-2009. It gets even better when you factor in 2010 data, with the growth since 2000 increasing to 269%. But, again, I have yet to see that data personally.

So what happened in Newark, and how to we prevent it from happening here?

If I remember, the count last year was done during a spate of unusually fair weather (y, n?) Simple weather could jar the results, will be interesting.

My shift last year was cold-ish (60s) and lightly raining. My shift this year was warmer (70s) and sunny/partly sunny.

Also: From 100 to 269, mebbe?

That would be a 169% increase; a 269% increase would be 100 to 369, right?

Our ability to measure this will undoubtedly improve in coming years as the significance of the cyclist and the multi-modal cyclist becomes more prominent. Look at any other early data collection process -- weather in the 1870s, road construction before 1910, Internet usage in the 1980s -- and you'll see that while some data got collected, they didn't get serious about it until something else happened. Weather got important when aviation started. Roads became important when the automobile required it. The Internet didn't take off until Berners-Lee invented HTML in 1990.

Our job now is to collect as much data as we can, in as many ways as we can, and identify where we can get better at it. My own contribution is my incessant tweeting about my comings and goings by bike and bus (@bus15237). Design data collection around that, and then we can get serious about improving the process.

@ieverhart don't ever ask me to make change or tie your shoes either.

Erok wrote a nice post on this today:

http://bike-pgh.org/blog/2011/09/28/bike-commuting-rates-in-pittsburgh-still-on-the-rise-up-269-percent-since-2000-census/

...and here's a good critique of it.

http://nullspace2.blogspot.com/2011/09/grease-in-numbers.html

can't say i disagree. but i still stand by the thought that this is useful as a comparable and to identify trends. we're definitely pushing it by claiming the precise 269%. but whatever. bike commuting has skyrocketed here since 2000.

^ I agree. While I know that numbers and statistics can be sampled to go either way, Pittsburgh has indeed skyrocketed since 2000, and I would say that ridership the last 2-3 years is gone up exponentially as well.

Keep on rocking! (and cycling!!)

Wewt! Article in the Trib.