John Faherty

jfaherty@enquirer.com

Cincinnati ranks 45th in the nation for percentage of workers who bike to work.

Number of bike commuters here is up 146 percent since 2000.

Bike Share now makes 260 bicycles available at 35 stations across the city.

Is Cincinnati a bike city? I mean, really a bike city?

This is actually a difficult question to answer. There is, however, one simple question to ask which provides a good, albeit narrow, look into biking: Do you ride your bike to work?

In Cincinnati, one half of one percent do. That means 1 per 200 people. That seems like a low number, and it is. However, the number of bike commuters in Cincinnati has increased by 146 percent since 2000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Through 2013, Cincinnati is ranked 45th in the nation for percentage of bike commuters. There is no doubt that ranking will increase. Currently, Cincinnati is a little below the national average of bike commuters, but the rate of increase here is significantly above the national average.

Dr. Nick Newman rides his bike from his home in Mount Lookout to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center whenever he can. He will not ride in a brutal heat, or a snowy and icy day, but if the weather cooperates at all, Newman rides 6 miles each way to stay fit and to do his part to help the environment.

His ride takes him down Observatory Avenue, then left on Madison Road and straight to the hospital. It used to be a lonely ride.

“I’m seeing more people; it used to be I was completely alone,” Newman said. “I see people, and sometimes you can even chat with another rider for a few miles.”

The best part is that there are now bike lanes for him, which he says helped a lot. “There used to be just signs, but now there is a lane, that changed the ride,” he said.

The rankings reveal there are no excuses in Cincinnati for weather and topography. San Francisco, with all of its steep hills, is No. 3 on the list with 3.8 percent commuting, and Minnesota, with its long frigid winters is No. 4, with 3.7 percent.

Mel McVay, senior city planner at Cincinnati Department of Transportation and Engineering, said the commuting data is too exclusionary to give a good sense of how much the city bikes.

“I never bike to work. Ever. But I bike at work, from meeting to meeting several times a week. That’s not captured in the census data,” McVay said. Her office in City Hall always has a bike around for that very purpose. The census data, she says, “excludes a large number of people in Cincinnati who are using bicycles to run errands, for social trips and for recreation. I think we’ve seen incredible growth in our bicycling community in the last few years.”

McVay likes to look at bikes on the street. It might be exercise, it might be a commute, it might be an errand or a trip to see friends. But it is one less car.

“When I talk about growth in ridership in Cincinnati, I base that on the counts that we try to do,” McVay said. Each year, she or somebody from her department will sit on Riverside Drive for two hours and count bikes. “In 2006, we counted 12 bicycles between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. In 2008 we counted 22 bikes; 2009, 29 bikes; 2010, 34 bikes; 2011, 44 bikes.” The department has since moved locations.

McVay is right – commuting is a small part of what people do with their vehicles. The U.S. Department of Transportation says that commuting only represents 34 percent of total car miles driven.

Ridership in Cincinnati should increase, and commuting should continue to grow, according to Ken McLeod of the League of American Bicyclists. The increase in bike lanes, particularly the protected bike lane on Central Parkway that eventually will connect Downtown to Clifton, is going to increase readership.

“Those types of efforts do help. They helped in New York and Chicago and Washington, D.C,” McLeod said. “Bike share is great, too, because it means easy access to a bike. And it means easy access to a bike that works.”

Bike Share started in Cincinnati one week ago. It means 260 bikes available at 35 stations spread across the city. These bikes would not typically be used by commuters, but they could be.

And Mayor John Cranley of Cincinnati continues to position himself as bike advocate. At the debut of Red Bike, he again espoused the benefits of biking. “It’s healthy and green and adds to the urban vitality of our city.” ■