When you're sitting in freeway traffic, it sometimes seems like every single person in Los Angeles is sitting in a car alongside you, trapped. Not so! Streetsblog LA correspondent/LA City Bicycle Advisory Committee chair Jeff Jacobberger broke down the data from the US Census Bureau's 2013 American Community Survey estimates to see exactly how Angelenos are getting to work and surprise—only most of them are doing it in cars. While driving alone was the number one way to get to work (with 67.1 percent of commuters), public transportation (10.8 percent) was the next most popular way to go, followed by carpooling (9.9 percent), and walking (3.6 percent). The number of people who bike to work is still tiny at 1.2 percent, but that's a 33 percent increase from 2010. Meanwhile, 5.4 percent of workers work at home and 1.9 percent commute some other way entirely (chopper?).
The biking numbers, unfortunately, are terribly lopsided: while most modes have similar usage by both men and women, the portion of male commuters who bike (1.8 percent) is more than double what it is for women (0.6 percent). The data only account for rides to work, so maybe the number of women running errands or biking for recreation is more equal to the total for men, but part of the disparity could also be that LA's streets are perceived as unsafe for or unwelcoming to female cyclists.
The USC area and parts of South LA do the most bike commuting and, surprisingly, "West L.A./Westwood has an overall bike mode share equal to Silver Lake, Echo Park, Westlake." We've mapped the 2011 data to show every census tract's bike commuting habits.
· What the Latest Census Data Says About L.A. City Bicycle Commuting [SB]
· Mapping LA's Bike Commuting Habits By Neighborhood [Curbed LA]
Loading comments...