Less Affluent Americans More Likely to Bike for Transportation
Who are bike improvements for? That can be a contentious question in cities where the implementation of bike infrastructure is associated with affluent white people. But as the above chart from Michael Andersen at People for Bikes shows, lower-income Americans are actually more likely than wealthy people to use a bike to get to work:
...bikes are disproportionately important tools for the lowest-income workers. The reasons are simple, and something any bike commuter would recognize: biking to work is cheap and, in a growing number of cities, convenient.
Still, in some cities, the provision of bike lanes does appear to overlook poorer neighborhoods. That's a basic issue of fairness and equity, though, not an indication that less affluent people don't benefit from safe conditions for biking.
Looking at state level data, in fact, it seems that attempts to make bike commuting more appealing have enticed rich and poor alike.
Andersen explains:
Thanks to its many bike-friendly cities, Oregon is an outlier, but the trend is clear: things that make bike commutes appeal to rich and middle-class workers also seem to make them appeal to poor workers.
The horizontal axis above shows the rate of bike commuting among workers who make more than $35,000 a year. The vertical axis shows the rate among workers who make less than $20,000.
The choices these two groups face are often different. Where a middle-class office worker might be choosing a bike commute instead of becoming a two-car household, a poor grocery worker might be choosing a bike commute instead of relying on bumming rides, walking -- or not even applying for jobs that aren't close to bus lines.
But as this chart shows, everyone in the economy faces choices. The work of cities is to help more people make the choices they and the people in their communities like. And when it comes to biking, there's not a lot of disagreement among poor, rich or middle class about what sort of biking people like.
Elsewhere on the Network today: Greater Greater Washington shares the smart way Chicago keeps its transit stations warm. Naked City reflects on the right and wrong ways to build an "auto mall." And Bike Delaware reports that Governor Jack Markell made safe biking a part of his state-of-the-state speech.
Stay in touch
Sign up for our free newsletter
More from Streetsblog USA
Thursday’s Headlines Don’t Like Riding on the Passenger Side
Can you take me to the store, and then the bank? I've got five dollars you can put in the tank.
Study: When Speed Limits Rise on Interstates, So Do Crash Hot Spots on Nearby Roads
Rising interstate speeds don't just make roads deadlier for people who drive on them — and local decision makers need to be prepared.
‘We Don’t Need These Highways’: Author Megan Kimble on Texas’ Ongoing Freeway Fights
...and what they have to teach other communities across America.
Should Wednesday’s Headlines 86 SUVs?
American tax law encourages people to buy the gas-guzzling and deadly vehicles, but some in Canada are pushing to ban them.
Brightline West Breaks Ground on Vegas to SoCal High-Speed Rail
Brightline West will be a 218-mile 186-mile-per-hour rail line from Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga — about 40 miles east of downtown L.A. — expected to open in 2028.
