Originally Posted by
Paul Barnard
Pardon the aside, but can you tell me more about that? How has your town fallen on hard times and what effect does that have on cycling?
Eugene has been seeing a remarkable decline in bicycle use over the past six years, that's what I meant by hard times. (Though like any other city we have our issues, with affordable housing being right at the top.) If you look up Eugene's bicycle commuter numbers on the US Census American Community Survey, you will see that cycling here was humming along with an increasing trend from 2005-2012. Since then, we've seen an epic collapse. (The high was actually 2009 at 10.8%; the low is the most recent year, 2017, at 4.4%). The data since 2012 matches tightly with the best fit line and projects zero cyclists by sometime in 2024.
This isn't happening in other cities near us. Portland is sitting flat at 6.3% and Corvallis is continuing its rise and is now up over 13%, so it's not the weather, gas prices or the economy, which we share with those other two. Eugene is doing something(s) different than other places that isn't working as intended and I'm kind of on a mission to figure this out. The leading candidate is official city fear messaging. Perversely, Eugene sends people out to targeted neighborhoods to chat face-to-face and then does a closed street event where cars aren't allowed for a few hours on a Sunday in that neighborhood. Cycling rates drop substantially in those neighborhoods almost every time they do this.
I'm really hoping e-bikes will save the day here. I'm seeing boatloads of new riders on them. I'd rather never figure out what is going wrong here and have it self-correct than figure it out only to find myself riding in a city that doesn't have any other people on bikes.