2015 Bike Month recap

May 2015 was another incredible Bike Month. Over 15,700 people from the Puget Sound and beyond logged 314,000 bike trips in the Bike Month Challenge presented by Adobe, and between 15,000-20,000 people rode on May 15 for F5 Bike to Work Day. WOW! 

Bike Month offers a rich dataset of biking data, and we at Cascade has spent the past few weeks examining the data, asking questions and learning about who bikes where and for what purpose. Here are some of the trends we've discovered.

Question #1: Where do Bike Month Challenge presented by Adobe participants live?  Where do they work?

Results: The Seattle neighborhoods that comprise the 98103 zip code: Fremont, Wallingford, Phinney Ridge, Greenlake, Greenwood and Licton Springs had the highest amount of participation for home zip codes. The downtown Seattle zip codes of 98101 and 98104 had the highest amount of participation for work zip codes. In other words, participation was highest near employment centers and areas with easy access to employment centers.

Question #2: Where are people most likely to start riding if they've never tried biking before?

Results: To answer this question, we looked at where new riders live and work. We found that, understandably, many new riders live near where they work, so they are more likely bike if the distance between home and work is short. The distribution of new riders mostly mirrored the distribution of all riders. Most people get started biking through encouragement of a friend or neighbor, so it makes sense that where more people ride, more people are encouraging their friends to ride.

Question 3: What kind of rider participates in the Bike Month Challenge presented by Adobe?

Results: During registration users identify their primary use for their bike: commuting, recreation/fun or getting around town/errands. We graphed those results, along with corresponding participation statistics for average total trips, commute trips and miles. Most participants use their bike for commuting purposes, and those who commute biked more than other groups.

Question 4: What are the most common biking routes? Where are the most common zip code pairings for where riders live and work?

Results: