Northwest environmental research group Sightline posted an interesting report on the demographics of biking. Researchers at Rutgers and Virginia Tech combed through years of American Communities Survey data for nine large North American cities (including Portland) to figure out who's biking by race and class.
Check out their charts:
Now the bad news: The percent of cyclists who are women fell significantly over those same years. In 2001, 33 percent of people who biked to work in those cities were women. In 2009, it had fall to 23 percent. Yikes. A bunch of people have addressed why women are less likely bike than men, but I last wrote about why in 2009.
In Portland, the Community Cycling Center is working on a program to figure out why certain groups don't bike at the rate of white males. Their report identified that the biggest barriers to biking are cost, safety issues, and lack of familiarity with the rules of the road.
