How Much Are We Biking? This Month’s Map Celebrates National Bike Month

In thinking ahead to May – National Bike Month – our map of the month features a new look at bicycle-based travel along the Wasatch Front.

It has been said that everyone is just one bike ride away from a good mood. But, how much do people in our region travel by bicycle? The answer has, until recently, been hard to get a handle on.

But, new ‘big data’ sources can now provide some insight into how people travel and the modes that they use. The Wasatch Front Regional Council and partners have been exploring trip information licensed from StreetLight, one of several commercial ‘big data’ providers, that estimates how we travel, drawing on a sample of anonymous GPS data from mobile devices.

This month’s Bike Trip Generation Maps use the StreetLight data to estimate bicycle trips generated in the warm months of 2021, for over 120 small areas of our region. The first map looks at bicycling’s share of all trips made, and the second map shows the bike trip intensity, in daily trips per square mile of development.

National Bike Month is a great time to pick up the pace with a little added focus on making cycling more attractive in your communities. Interested in exploring existing and planned bicycle routes and pathways near you? The Wasatch Choice Active Transportation map or our Active Transportation Data Resources maps are great places to start.

In the future we’ll use similar ‘big data’ analyses to look at other travel modes like personal vehicles, transit, and freight. If you have ideas you’d like us to research, let us know at analytics@wfrc.org.