Those people who bike to work, gleefully toting their change of clothes and tennis shoes, appear to be a growing clan. New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the amount of people who commute to work on a bike has increased by 60 percent over the last decade. In 2000, roughly 500,000 people commuted via bicycle. That number jumped to 786,000 between 2008 and 2012.
Despite the increase, bikers still make up a miniscule fraction of all commuters at 0.6 percent. The people of Portland, Oregon had the largest increase in bicycle commuters, with pedal pushers growing from making up 1.8 percent of the city's population to 6.1 percent. The study's author chalks up the lion's share of that popularity to the implementation of special lanes and bike-share programs.
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