Fun With Data: How Workers Commute

Image: Census Bureau via Economix

Bike Pittsburgh has posted some great, sortable data about how commuters get to work in major American cities, drawn from a Census Bureau report. San Francisco ranked near the top of cities with a high percentage of walkers, transit riders and cyclists, and a relatively low percentage of people who commute alone in a car. Only New York City at 23.3 percent and Washington D.C. at 37.2
percent had fewer solo drivers than San Francisco's 38.4 percent. San Francisco also had a high percentage of car-free residents, at nearly 20 percent of the population.

Wichita,
Kansas ranks as the place with the highest percentage of drivers: 85.1
percent of commuters use a car to get to work. The unfortunate national
median for commuting by car is 74.15 percent.

There's also an interesting chart on bike commuting trends by gender, in response to a Scientific American article,
which asserts that cycling needs to be made more attractive to women in
order to boost overall urban cycling numbers. The argument seems to
check out: according to Bike Pittsburgh's data, even in cities with
relatively high levels of bike commuters, men cycle to work
significantly more than women.