Seven quick things I learned about bicycling nationally

By Jennifer Dill, TREC director.

I recently completed a national poll of people living in urban areas in conjunction with the National Association of Realtors® on Community and Transportation Preferences. The overall results are posted here. The survey included 3,000 adults living in the 50 largest urban areas in the U.S. (That includes suburban areas, as well as denser urban cores.) Here are some highlights related to bicycling.

1.    Less than one in five people have biked in the past month.

Overall, 72% of the adults surveyed said they were physically able and know how to ride a bike. Of those, 25% had ridden in the past month. (The survey was conducted in mid-May, so weather was reasonable.) That means only about 18% of adults in these urban areas biked recently. Most of the people who had biked, rode only for exercise (60%, or 15% of those who are able to bike), while the others (40%, or 10% of those who are able to bike) made at least some bike trips for transportation, such as to work, school, shopping, etc.
Note: From here on I will be focusing only on those people who are physically able and know how to ride a bike.

2.    There are gender and generational gaps.

This isn’t a big surprise, but women were less likely to bike than men,...

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European Bicycle and Pedestrian Planning (Scan Tour Report)

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Millennials prefer walking to driving, so housing market is changing

Lessons from the Development of a Guidebook on Pedestrian and Bicycle Connections to Transit

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Lessons from the Development of a Guidebook on Pedestrian and Bicycle Connections to Transit

To improve safety and increase transit use, transit agencies and the jurisdictions they serve have to approach transit service as door-to-door not just stop-to-stop.

...

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Friday Transportation Seminar: Racial Bias in Driver Yielding Behavior at Crosswalks

We are committed to making decisions that promote the success and well-being of our campus community. Until further notice, all live events hosted by TREC will be online only.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

THE TOPIC

This seminar discusses how pedestrian race and gender can influence drivers’ behavior in interactions with pedestrians at...

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PSU Transportation Seminar: Active Transportation Data Fusion: Incorporating Big Data to Estimate Volumes

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. We've opened up PSU Transportation Seminars to other days of the week, but the format is the same: Feel free to bring your lunch! If you can't join us in person, you can always watch online via Zoom.

    PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

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    Economic Value of Walkability

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    The video begins at 1:16.

    Forget Yards, Metro Homebuyers Are Looking for Good Sidewalks

    Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike

    The video begins at 0:34.

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    Speaker: Joseph Broach, Ph.D. Candidate, Portland State University
    Topic: Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike
    Summary: Some travel routes attract people walking and cycling, while others may scare them away. What features of street environments are most important, and how do available routes affect decisions to bike or walk on a specific trip? 

    Research to date has focused on either large-scale areal measures like "miles of bike lane nearby" or else has considered only shortest path routes. Neither method is suited to capturing the impact of targeted route-level policies like neighborhood greenways. This session will present a new technique for measuring bike and walk accessibility along the most likely route for a given trip. The method is applied to travel data, and results provide new insight into the relationship between route quality and travel mode choice.

    Multi Modal Level of Service: State of the Practice

    The video begins at 2:12.

    Abstract: A new way of measuring Level of Service for bicycles, pedestrians, and transit is planned for the next Highway Capacity Manual. Are these the right tools to help us plan and build the system we want? If not, what answers do these tools give us and how should we use them? This presentation will review the approaches to multi-modal Level of Service at the national and local levels and discuss efforts to validate the HCM methods. It will also cover the effect of our LOS policies on climate change and explore ways that we might tweak our analysis to get a more accurate picture of the transportation system for all users.

    Bio: Seleta Reynolds plans, funds, and implements bicycle and pedestrian projects as a consultant for the Seattle office of Fehr & Peers. Seleta contributed to the national Safe Routes to School toolbox and has served as a guest lecturer on transportation planning for San Jose State University, Portland State University, and UC Berkeley. She serves on the Transportation Research Board Pedestrian Committee and as the President of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. One of her favorite side projects was a collaboration with artists Steve Lambert and Packard Jennings to imagine the future of transportation for the Art on Market Street project in San Francisco. Prior to joining Fehr & Peers in 2001, she was the bicycle and...

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