This graph may have been drawn on MS Paint, but that doesn't mean it's not astounding and accurate! Credit: City of Portland

This exciting news just in from the Census Bureau: Portland has the highest percentage of commutes to work by bike of any city in the entire goddamn U.S. of A!

The numbers collected by the census show a huge jump in biking to work in Portland over the last decade. In 1996, fewer than two percent of Portlanders biked to work. Since then, the number of Portlanders who say they get to work primarily by bike has increased a whopping 250 percent. In 2008, 6.5 percent of Portlanders said their primary mode of transportation to work is a bike. That’s just about 35,000 people. Holy shit.

Also, if you’re wondering, the Portland Mercury domination team has already logged 609 miles in the annual Bike Commute Challenge.

This graph may have been drawn on MS Paint, but that doesnt mean its not astounding and accurate!
  • This graph may have been drawn on MS Paint, but that doesn’t mean it’s not astounding and accurate!

So, what’s changed since 1996? The city has doubled the number of bike lanes from 100 miles of bikeways around Portland to over 300 miles today. We’ve replaced 20 car parking spots with bike corrals that can fit about a dozen parked bikes each. We’ve signed on to the Safe Routes to School program, which teaches a two-week long bike safety class to students in almost every public Portland elementary school. We’ve hosted national bike building conferences, created the nation’s largest free bike-fun festival and patronized bike-friendly businesses. All these changes show that creating a bike-friendly city doesn’t just happen. Infrastructure matters. Education matters. Culture matters.

The bad news? Beating the rest of America in bike commuting is a pretty low bar. In Amsterdam, 30 to 40 percent of people bike to work. Next weekend, big time Danish urban planners are coming to Portland as part of bike-builder festival Oregon Manifest to present how biking has transformed transportation in Denmark. We may be #1 in the home country, but as a city we’ve still got a lot to learn.

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

16 replies on “Portland is America’s #1 Bike Commute City!”

  1. Way to go Portland! To think some people think the bike lanes and bike parking are a waste.

    Part of the reason Amsterdam has that high of a percentage of bikers is because the streets are ancient and thin, and some streets do not even allow vehicles. Maybe if Portland turned all of its major streets into Canals then we would be able to match Amsterdam… until then…

  3. “The city has doubled the number of bike lanes from 100 miles of bikeways around Portland to over 300 miles today. “

    Submitted without comment.

  7. Robert, yes. Amsterdam is both more compact and much, much flatter than Portland. It also rains much less. And there’s more jobs to commute to.

  8. Am I the only one who finds that graph kind of depressing? Despite all the gains in cycling (which are exaggerated by having everything starting at zero – it’s still a small percentage of the total), the number of people driving alone hasn’t dropped. The same number of cars are on the road, just with fewer people in them. If we can do something about that (decent park and ride facilities would be a good start), we’d really have something to cheer about…

  10. More people are biking. Yay! The same numbers of people are still driving. Boo! This info can be spun as both positive and negative news. Yay boo!

  11. The reason the number of bikers have increased is that all the hipsters from Brooklyn are invading Portland, thanks to how the New York times fellates this city.

    Whether they have jobs is a different story…

  12. Mmmmm not so, our annoying hipsters are staying put in droves in Williamsburg, I see them in packs hunting girls with their skinny jeans and little U-locks hanging out their back pockets.

    They are also on their bikes which is increasing in number here too. Try again LawyerPepper and great job Portland!

  14. Thomas (and anyone else who cares),

    yes, the mayor’s office sent out a press release with some of the info in this post. Send me an email and I’ll forward it along to you!

    smirk (at) portlandmercury (dot) com

  15. I don’t know that it’s particularly “depressing” that the number of drivers has remained constant. Considering that it has more than likely gone up everywhere else. I mean a whole new crop of folks turn 18 every year right? not to mention immigrants.

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