UCD Data Digest: Examining Bicycling Statistics in West Philadelphia

Recently, the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability (OTIS) announced plans to implement new street safety measures on portions of West Market and Chestnut Streets, two of the main east/west thoroughfares that cross West Philadelphia. The City installed a parking-protected bike lane on Chestnut Street running from 45th to 34th Streets in 2017; this new project will extend the Chestnut Street bike lane to the city’s edge at 63rd Street/Cobbs Creek Parkway. This announcement, coupled with an increased interest in cycling during the COVID-19 pandemic, led us to look at the numbers regarding cycling specifically on West Chestnut Street.  

We started by examining bike trips along different sections of Chestnut Street from April through June of each of the past four years. We looked at two segments of the street, one that includes the parking-protected bike lane from 42nd to 34th street, and another, from 54th to 50th, that does not. Our analysis focused on the peak commuting hours of 6-10 AM, during the months of May, June, and July for each year.  

As you can see, bike trips (as well as all other forms of transportation) took a sharp decline during 2020 as pandemic lockdowns kept people in their homes. Traffic on the segment with a protected bike lane fell from approximately 1,000 trips per period to under 200 in the early summer months of 2020 before beginning to rebound in 2021. Interestingly, bike trips on the section with no bike lane from 54th – 50th have not recovered, and in fact, continued to decline in 2021.   

While the number of total bicycle trips declined during the pandemic, the percentage of bicycle trips counted as commuting to work held steady. Across the last three years, approximately 14% of bike trips between the hours of 6-10 AM on Chestnut Street were taken by people heading to work.

Alongside fewer trips came less total milage biked. The average distance per trip fell from nearly 5 miles in 2018 down to 2.5 miles in 2021. At the same time, the average speed of the same trips increased, from 8 to 9 MPH, potentially due to decreased traffic from other bikes, cars, and pedestrians.  

Despite the decline in bike traffic on Chestnut Street during the pandemic, data shows that cycling has become even more popular over the last two years. According to the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, Philadelphia's Kelly Drive saw a nearly 5-fold increase in riders between March 2019 and March 2020.  

The installation of additional bike lanes will benefit riders by providing increased safety for cyclists. According to the Bicycle Coalition, crashes involving bicyclists decreased by 100% along Chestnut after the installation of the parking-protected bike lane in 2017.  With traffic-crash deaths increasing rapidly, the upcoming changes to Chestnut Street will provide a safer, more friendly environment for everyone using the street in the coming year.  And just as leisure cycling has raced ahead, we anticipate commuter cycling will start to come back strong in 2022, with schools open and more workers coming into offices.