Eric De Place, of Sightline Daily put together a few very informative charts in his post that goes a long way to help visualize the numerical reality of who is bicycling in America. Most notable is the pie chart above that goes far to disprove the false notion that most cyclists are "rich, yuppie elitists." In fact, that is far from the truth with the poorest making up the largest portion of cyclists but with people of all economic fortunes almost equally represtend.
The data for Da Place's article comes from a new report from our very own John Pucher of Rutgers University and his protegee Ralph Beuhler who is now at Virgina Tech. The report title "Analysis of Bicycling Trends and Policies in Large North American Cities," take a look at trends in number of large American cities and takes special focus on New York City highlighting its achievements as well as its failures.
I highly advise that you take a look at both De Place's short blog post and Pucher and Beuhler's report.
2 comments:
Who thinks cyclists are "rich, yuppie elitists"? Where did you get that from?
That notion has come about locally from drivel coming out of NYC as of late, particularly from their tabloid press. I've also heard similar nonsense from some here in New Jersey.
The real point is that cyclists as a whole are very evenly made of all income levels, which I think is rather interesting and proves the inclusive and democratic nature of the bicycle at least where income is concerned.
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