Bicycling Levels in NYC

More cycling trips are made in New York than in any other U.S. city. Yet for decades, the true extent of bicycling here has been largely unknown. For example, the federal Census of Journeys to Work undercounts bicycling, since it ignores non-work trips (the vast majority), counts only respondents' primary means of travel, excludes students and is conducted in March, a below-average period for cycling.

Similarly, the City DoT's annual “screen-line” count records only cyclists entering or leaving the Manhattan Central Business District between 7 am and 7 pm, thus omitting the far larger volume of riders circulating within the CBD, as well as cycling in northern Manhattan and the other four boroughs. The agency also excludes these data from its compilations of vehicle use, transit ridership and ferry usage (e.g., Recent Trends in Traffic Volumes & Transit Ridership), further margnizalizing cycling.

T.A. Midtown Traffic Counts

To better estimate cycling levels in the CBD, Transportation Alternatives has counted bicycle traffic on midtown Manhattan avenues every spring since 1988 (excluding 1991). In these surveys, summarized on page 158, T.A. volunteers counted all traffic — not only bicycles, but private autos, cabs, trucks, buses, mopeds and motorcycles — on various avenues over 21 3/4 hours, a total of 37,515 vehicles.

The surveys establish that bicycles account for nearly one in every dozen vehicles traveling on midtown avenues during midday on weekends. As a percentage of total traffic, bicycles averaged 8.6% for all four years, ranging between a low of 7.2% in 1989 and a high of 9.6% in 1990. In the most recent year, 1992, bicycles were 9.0% of total traffic. Per avenue, the rate of cycling averaged 148 per hour during the four years.

While cycling drops off somewhat in winter, longtime observation suggests that these numbers overstate annual cycling levels only modestly. On rainy days, which accounted for one-sixth of the survey, bicycles averaged 99 per hour per avenue, or 6.2% of all traffic.

Number of Daily Bicyclists in NYC

Although it is beyond T.A.'s resources to count cycling levels or percentages citywide, we have attempted to estimate the number of people who ride bikes in NYC on a typical day. We derived a figure of 75,000 daily cyclists — 5,000 commercial and 70,000 other riders — as shown in the table on the following page and summarized directly below.

Our methodology began with the DoT's screen-line count, which we adjusted to a 24-hour period; assuming that 20 bicycle trips are made within the Manhattan CBD for each trip entering from outside, we estimated that 158,600 bicycle trips are made within the CBD on an average day. We then collected published estimates of each borough's daily vehicle “trip ends” (literally the volume of trips ending in that borough). By prorating bicycling's modal split within the CBD to the rest of the city, we estimated that an additional 106,400 biking trips are made daily in NYC outside the CBD, for a city-wide total of 265,000 cycling trips. In doing so, we assumed that cycling's share of vehicle trips in the other boroughs is only 10-20% as great as in Manhattan (with an average ratio of 17%).

Finally, we estimated that 5,000 commercial cyclists ride daily as couriers or food deliverers, making 12 trips each, for a total of 60,000 trips. Assuming that other cyclists average 3 trips apiece, the remaining 205,000 trips are made by 68,000 cyclists, which we rounded upward to 70,000.