Census data shows strong bike commuting gains in St. Louis and Kansas City

UPDATE: Data from the 2010 Census shows that bicycle commuting in Missouri has nearly tripled since 2000 and walk-to-work trips are up 71%.

New Census data shows that bike to work rates have held steady despite the drop in gas prices.

Rates of bicycling to work made huge gains in 2008 when gasoline prices spiked, and so far most of those new bike commuters seem to be continuing even as gas prices have gone back down. Data for St. Louis and Kansas City reflect the national trend of holding onto gains made in 2008.

St. Louis
St. Louis had a 67% increase from 2007 to 2008 and remained about the same in 2009. The city's current bike to work rate is 0.68% of all commuters, higher than the national rate of 0.55% and almost double the rate of 0.35% in 2000.

Kansas City
KC has actually gained bicycle commuters since gas prices dropped, seeing an increasing from 0.18% in 2008 to 0.28% in 2009. That is over twice the rate of 0.12% in 2000.

Work vs Non-Work Trips
Unfortunately the Census' annual survey only tracks commuting to work, not the non-work trips like errands to the store, library, school, etc. Given the sprawling nature of Missouri's cities and high amounts of inter-city commuting in rural Missouri, we know that many people simply live too far away from work to commute to work by bicycle.  Many of these people instead use their bicycles for transportation for non-work trips.  Unfortunately this is a big piece of missing data.

The League of American Bicyclists has more information and complete city rankings.

Percentage of bicycle commuters by city and year

Kansas City:

2009: 0.28%
2008: 0.18%
2007: 0.27%
2006: 0.06%
2005: 0.02%
2000: 0.12%

St. Louis:

2009: 0.68%
2008: 0.72%
2007: 0.48%
2000: 0.35%

Notes

• Only trips to work are counted, not non-work trips like errands or trips for recreation and exercise. So, the census counts only a minority of all bicycle trips. One estimate, based on Census data, puts the total number of bicycle trips for St Louis between 0.68% and and 2.64% of all trips, and for Kansas City between 0.34% and 1.62% of all trips.
• Data comes from the American Community Survey, the Census Bureau's annual sample.
• Only principal cities have data, not suburbs or metro areas.
• The American Community Survey historically undercounts bicyclists, and it often shows big variations from year to year. However, these year-to-year variations and fluctuations generally do not reflect actual changes in the amount of bicycling in a particular city. They are simply statistical noise due inherent to data sets with a small sample size. The further we drill down into the data--to state and then city data--the smaller the sample size becomes.  That means that most year-to-year variation we see is simply the statistical noise inherent in small data sets and not meaningful in any way.  Long-term trends found by looking at several years worth of data are more reliable.  For city-level data, it takes about 5-10 years of data to accumulate enough samples to put the statistical 'signal' well about the statistical 'noise'.
• Only people who consider bicycling to be their primary mode of commuting to work are counted. That means that people who commute a few days a week by bicycle, or commute by bicycle for only part of the year are not counted at all.  In addition, people who combine bicycling with another mode (by driving part way, using transit part way, etc) are not counted unless they consider the bicycling segment to be the primary method of traveling to work. And, again, this data focuses on the trip to work only, meaning that it is measuring only a minority of all bicycle trips.