The US Census released a pretty cool study yesterday that touched on many aspects of how Americans get to work each day. As a biker, I was happy to see that Seattle was third in the nation with percentage of workers that bike to work. I'm proud to say that I am one of the 6,963 people that biked to work in Seattle during 2005. The other two cities that beat out Seattle were Portland and Minneapolis. The fact that Portland is number one makes sense to me b/c I have been there and it is very biker friendly and has a mild climate. However, I have to wonder how the study was conducted when it shows that Minneapolis has more bicycle commuters than Seattle for the simple reason that the biking season in Minneapolis is about 9 months shorter than the biking season in Seattle (which is all year).
The study also looked at how many people walk to work, work at home, carpool, and drive to work (alone and with others). I guess it is not a shock that overall, across the country, 87.7% of the people drive to work in some capacity and 77% end up driving alone.
I wish the study took it one step further and analyzed:
Of the 77% that drive alone to work, how many do so in an SUV, in cities that average less than .5 inches of snow per year. Sadly, I'm sure that percentage would be pretty high.
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