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:
As Eric de Place at Sightline notes, “White people remain somewhat over-represented, but bicycling appears to be trending toward racial parity.”
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.
The top graph is missing the X axis legend. Or it just makes no sense.
Agreed.
First marriage is redefined, and now biking! Dammit! #onlyjoking
I’m glad we have young white Portlanders to care both about bikes and racial equality.
I can’t wait to read that report from a group of young white Portlanders about why the minorities don’t ride bikes. No doubt they got a grant from some old white Portlanders at City Hall to crack the mystery.
Surely a group of earnest YWPs will solve the problem through caring and the writing of reports!
Non-white Americans are more likely to live in urban spaces and thus, I’m guessing, have greater access to public transit and walkable neighborhoods. Scuze a little armchair sociology but likely what we’re seeing is blacks bike more as they’re pushed out of walkable neighborhoods by inner city yuppification.
None of the barriers listed by CCC are real, just perceptual. Biking’s cheaper than the bus (which is why the graph claims its popular among the poor). If we continue to hyper-define biking as a cultural choice, people of a different cultural background will see it and say “well, I don’t wear spandex or skinny jeans, so uhhh, no thank you.”
Scuze a lil armchair sociology but non-white Americans are more likely to live in urban spaces and thus have greater access to public transit and walkable neighborhoods. My guess is that more blacks bike when they’re pushed out of inner cities by inner city yuppification.
None of the barriers listed by CCC are real, just perceptual. Biking’s cheaper than the bus (which is why the graph claims it’s popular among the poor). If we continue to hyper-define biking as a cultural choice, people of a different cultural background will see it and say “well, I don’t wear spandex or skinny jeans, so uhhh, no thank you.”
Well, somewhere a server is making me look like a double blowhard. You win this round, technology.
@ blabby, that was sublimely curmudgeonly.
I’m sad to report my “KEEP PORTLAND BIKERS WHITE!” sticker seems to not be having much effect, though it may correlate with the recent uptick in ass-kickings, so that’s…. also sociology.
Colin,
I assume you are the one kicking ass in faithful defense of your racially pure bike code. Godspeed. Watch out for the Asians. They are elusive.
Blabbily,
C’mon, man. You are smart enough to know almost ALL social research starts that way, including the stuff that attempts to grasp the obvious.
That said, wanna go white bike with me this weekend?
agh, sorry, the version of the graph I uploaded originally had the x-axis lopped off. I just fixed it.
This is what happens when you have “moving day drinking” challenges. Tequila chased by vitamin water. Ugh.
Many women don’t bike because they think it looks stupid. This is why many women don’t wear helmets(that I’ve observed, at least.)
ugh. every time white people start something cool…
Seems to me that a lot of the white people who do ride bikes don’t have much familiarity with the “rules of the road” either.