Will the pandemic bicycling boom last?
A new analysis from Streetlight suggests it could stick around
Dora Caballero always considered riding a bike in Houston a dangerous activity.
But it wasn’t until after the COVID-19 pandemic when the lifelong Houstonian saw people rushing out to purchase bicycles, and her husband participating in group bike rides, that she figured she would buy her first bike this summer.
“It’s getting a little bit safer,” Caballero said. “I’ve definitely gotten more comfortable and know what to look for now, but I am still not letting my guard down.”
Caballero isn’t the only one who decided to take up bike riding after seeing the surge of new bike riders during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, there was a boom of new bike riders across the country — and data suggest renewed enthusiasm to ride bicycles could be sustained in the years to come.
A new report by Streetlight, a company that measures traffic patterns across different modes of transportation, developed a way of measuring the annual average daily bicycle trips for a metropolitan area. The company found across the country, between 2019 and 2022, the annual average daily bicycle trips per year grew 37%.
More than half of the country’s states, including Texas, saw bicycle trips increase by at least 25% during the same period. As pandemic restrictions eased, the number of bicycle trips slowed down, as expected — but the data suggest the bicyclists across the country may not dip back down to 2019 levels anytime soon.
“At the year-over-year level, things are definitely slowing down in most places,” said Emily Adler, Streetlight’s director of content. “In 2023 we are going to be on the lookout if it’s a moment of contraction, and if we can bring momentum back to the bike sector.”
Streetlight’s data found the average number of daily bike trips per 1,000 people in the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area rose from 8 to 11 between 2019 and 2022. When it comes to the growth in the number of bicycle trips, data show Houston ranked No. 29 of the country’s 50 top metropolitan areas.
Still, although ridership in Houston remains higher than it was in 2019, people aren’t buying bikes at the same rate.
Adam Potter, owner of Planetary Cycles, in 2020 told the Chronicle his bike shop couldn’t keep up with the demand for bikes. Now, Potter said he is struggling to move inventory.
“It was like going from feast to famine,” Potter said. “I think the entire world saw this huge increase in bicycle sales to the point where almost every manufacturer had their inventory completely depleted to almost nothing. I think we probably did about five years’ worth of business in 18 months.”
Potter said his company optimistically put in future orders to restore inventory levels during the pandemic, thinking it would be a sustainable boom.
“That recreational rider, who is really our bread and butter of the industry, is probably not needing a bike right now,” Potter said.
Potter said a lot of bike shops were on the verge of going out of business before the pandemic boosted sales. But now they face danger again.
“The pandemic saved them, and now a lot of those stores and others will probably be going out of business just because there’s just not enough dollars to support the number of shops that we currently have,” Potter said.
In order to get people to start buying bicycles again, Executive Director of BikeHouston Joe Cutrufo said people need to start seeing people who look like them riding bikes in public.
“If you see people biking, or if you know of safe and attractive places to ride bikes, and if you know people who are riding and they’re not so different from you, then you’re more likely to get on a bike in the first place,” Cutrufo said. “In order for cities like Houston to grow its bicycling population, people need to see people who look like them, out on the streets and trail and on our bikeways.”
One of the benefits of Streetlight’s data, Cutrufo said, is that it can help make the case for the county and city to invest in more bike infrastructure.
“But, we know that the biggest barrier to getting on a bike is the threat of traffic danger,” Cutrufo said. “We certainly find this type of data useful to better understand how we can serve and grow the population of people who ride bikes. Understanding the barriers to getting more people on bikes and how we can take them down is key.”
Historically, metro areas have had a hard time measuring bike activity, which can make it seem like people aren’t biking, according to Adler from Streetlight.
“Being able to actually look at the data and see there is a real constituency out there that’s biking, tends to be a really important use of our data,” Adler said.