So I hope and believe the numbers will be even greater for 20211, actually. Multiple new people with bikes, and soon people will move about as usual.
I find that it really helps my energy levels and mental state in the same way my commute used to. Obviously, it takes a bit more discipline, but I actually look forward to it - a chance to check in on the neighborhood etc.
Another hint is it do something new on the route every day. It has grown to be quite a mental challenge to figure out a street or alley (or way of hooking things up) that I haven't taken before!
Now with lockdowns, I'm not biking nearly as much, the weekly five-a-side football is closed, there's nothing open, so little motivation to walk around town, and so on.
[1] https://ampedcycling.com/is-an-e-bike-actually-worth-it/
The latter group is likely two orders of magnitude larger than the former, so the interesting thing will be if some people become "converts" as it were, when the restrictions are released. I can see arguments both for and against.
It would be interesting to see an analysis of this in a couple of years, but comparing areas of long term disruption (e.g. USA) vs. shorter (e.g. New Zealand) but that also has all the usual problems of comparison.
So, it's amazing how much the cycling numbers here have gone up even with people like me staying home. I'm looking forward to seeing how many people are cycling once it's all over. Will people like me going back to cycling be added on top of all the others who switched from subway to cycling, or will they go back to subway?
[2] https://turfvasterbotten.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/eat-sleep-...
That being said, I sincerely hope people who took up cycling during the pandemic will continue to do so 2021+ forward. More cyclists = more planning focus on cycling = better & safer cycling infrastructure.
That statistic only observes a change in behaviour. It doesn't explain why it changed.
So, I think that claim can/should be falsified:
If there's an increase in bike usage, that's not because people feel the weather - in it's own regard - is less of an impediment to prefer biking over public transport. It's because people choose enduring changing weather conditions over accepting serious risk to their health for the sake of convenience.
> It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good
According to Wikipedia [1]
> There are three necessary preconditions for this situation to arise:[citation needed] > the good in question must be an inferior good, > there must be a lack of close substitute goods, and > the goods must constitute a substantial percentage of the buyer's income, but not such > a substantial percentage of the buyer's income that none of the associated normal > goods are consumed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good
So, if the only other close alternate to bicycling was public transportation, and other options (car) are because their costs outweigh the benefits, then biking would be a Giffen good.
This can be explained either because the perceived costs of the alternative - public transportation - became prohibitively expensive in terms of an increased health risk and the potentially associated costs that come with that risk (death, disabilities, healthcare costs, income loss,...). Or because people are now more willing to accept changing weather conditions (per your claim).
Of course the only way to confirm this is to actually do a survey and gauge the motivations that prompted a population to change their behaviour.
As an anecdotal aside: I was a heavy user of public transportation. I switched to going on foot, or taking my bike to get around exactly because of the pandemic.
As to Giffen: people are shifting public transport -> car & bike. The "budget" (road capacity) is fixed and close to full utilisation. Increased demand with inelastic supply results "inflation", which is the somewhat convoluted way the income effect comes about. Aaaand... yeah, I can't quite remember how I made the next part fit. so you may be right.
Sep -5 % to -13 %
Dec -20 % to -41 % [incomplete data]
When you say car traffic, I presume congestion and not volume of cars. I'm sure volume is down overall and I recall from discussions about congestion pricing, even a 10% decrease in volume can result in congestion completely dissipating. In normal times, Induced Demand would lead to volume going back up as transit users convert back to cars.
DFW Metro: https://dart.org/about/dartkpi.asp
Some numbers. These are total monthly counts of riders observed at the same 17 measurement points:
That's quite an increase year-over-year! The December number are lower, but possibly more impressive considering it was rather lockdown-ish and general mobility fell somewhat.It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather.
It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good): People avoid public transport and any single one might opt for a car instead. But because road capacity is fixed (that's income in the analogy), more of it needs to be devoted to the most efficient option, i. e. bikes. So the city converted car to bike lanes, and car traffic is actually down.