What do Oregon State University, the University of Oregon, Colorado State University, the University of Colorado, the University of Montana, the University of California – Santa Barbara, the University of Florida, Utah State University, Cal State Chico, and Western Washington University have in common?
These ten universities anchor, in order, the metropolitan areas with the highest shares of bike work trips in the US, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The list of walking metropolises is similarly biased towards higher education: Cornell, Oregon State, Iowa State, Illinois, Kansas State, Iowa, and Penn State are among the highest employers in seven of the top ten walking MSA’s (the other three are beach towns Ocean City, NJ and Jacksonville, NC; and the Army mega-base at Hinesville-Fort Stewart, GA).
It is no secret that campuses attract lots of non-motorized trips. Students are generally poorer than the population at large (cars are less available), and also tend to be in better health (walking or biking is a viable alternative). Also, college campuses are often old, dense, and sparse in parking.
What is surprising about this list are missing towns. Certainly every college campus cannot be expected to exert equal influence on its hometown. It would be unfair to expect Northwestern to propel Chicago to the top of the charts like Illinois can do to Urbana-Champaign.
But Logan, UT (home of Utah State) has an average high temperature of 49 degrees during the school year, and you can expect significant snow and ice. How on earth is it possible that Logan beats out towns like College Station, TX, Athens, GA, or Oxford, MS for a share of bicycle trips? And I’ve seen “Breaking Away”- where is Bloomington, Indiana? And what makes Gainesville so much different from Tuscaloosa, or Ithaca from Princeton?
I imagine that these cities are not far down on the list, especially relative to other towns in their respective regions. Some may well fall within the margin of error that is published in the report. But if I were responsible for campus transportation at a university in a college town in the South or Midwest, I would be scrambling to find answers as to why more people ride bikes in Missoula and Logan than in my hypothetical town, because the environment sure doesn’t make it easier.
Very interesting! The college town is a unique place, and hard to capture in major metros. But you make a good point that other college towns could benefit greatly from the lessons these top ten cities could teach.
This is an interesting piece and I find it interesting that Jacksonville, NC is in that list. As a Topsail island resident, I am fairly familiar with Jacksonville and the traffic there is horrible which on it’s face might seem to lend itself to bikes but It seems to me that it would be dangerous to bike there.