Sent this to the newspapers, but just in case they don't run it, here's an FYI on the latest commuting figures for Madison, Dane County, and the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area.
I can send the full spreadsheet to anyone that wants to further parse the numbers, but attachments don't work on Bikies. All sorts of data is available at the ACS site linked below, but pulling it off the site is not intuitive. Someone had to show me how to do it. The numbers are in, and more people are biking to work, and fewer people are driving alone compared to both 2007 and 2009. These are a percentage of people working, so it has nothing to do with the recession. (It also doesn't include students who are not working, since these are work-only trips.) In 2012 6.2% of City of Madison residents biked to work, compared to 4.8% in 2009 and 4.3% in 2007. That's a pretty big jump in five years. For driving, City residents drove alone less. 2012: 61.2% 2009: 62.9% 2007: 63.9% Bicycling to work has also increased as a percentage of commutes in the Metro region (Dane, Columbia, and Iowa Counties), and Dane County. These numbers are especially interesting to note as the City, UW, and Shorewood Hills consider what to do about University Ave<http://www.cityofmadison.com/trafficengineering/nearWestTransportationStudy.cfm> and the Wisconsin DOT considers what to do about the Beltline<http://www.dot.wi.gov/projects/swregion/madisonbeltline/index.htm> . If people are driving less and biking more to get to work and home, does this change our transportation priorities, considering that most congestion problems are during peak commuting times only? For what it's worth, carpooling, transit, and walking seem to be up from 2009, but up and down from 2007. *The American Community Survey<http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml> replaces the decennial Census and comes out every year, so instead of guessing what's happening between census counts, we get a better picture. The ACS changed how they counted commute trips, so it's hard to compare numbers now with those from before 2007. Robbie Webber Transportation Policy Analyst State Smart Transportation Initiative www.ssti.us 608-263-9984 (o) 608-225-0002 (c) [email protected]
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