Transportation
How Washington, D.C., Built a Bike Boom
The city’s pioneering bike-share program and growing network of lanes was key. So is “human infrastructure.”
Cycling has taken off in the American capital. Nearly 17,000 cyclists regularly rode their bikes to work in Washington, D.C. in 2016, according to Census estimates, which is about 5 percent of the city’s commuters. That’s nearly triple the “mode share” it had in 2006, putting it in second place on the list of top biking cities in the U.S., just behind famously gear-friendly Portland, Oregon.
In absolute numbers, D.C. is still a dwarf compared to, say, New York, where 48,000 people pedal to work every week (which is only one percent of commuters there). But D.C.’s growth has exploded since the city piloted one of the country’s first modern bikeshare programs, and started building an ambitious network of bike lanes.