Bikeshare ridership increased in March and April of this year over 2020, but May is when the U.S. bicycle community really celebrates two-wheeled, pedal-powered transportation with National Bike Month. The celebration peaks May 17-23 for Bike To Work Week 2021, and Friday, May 21, is Bike To Work Day. To commemorate Bike Month, BTS presents updated analysis of trends in bikeshare trips in the U.S. and a new gateway page to BTS bike-related content, “Bikeshare and E-Scooter Data and Visualizations.”

Bikeshare Ridership Ticks Up with Arrival of Spring

Bikeshare usage has changed since the advent of COVID-19 interrupted a years-long increase in ridership. As the BTS chart below indicates, ridership on the six largest bikeshare systems began increasing again in May 2020 and rose above 2019 levels in November 2020. Following November, ridership receded again with colder temperatures, before rising in March and April of this year.

Note: The six systems included in the figure are: Citi Bike New York (New York, NY); Capital Bikeshare (Washington, DC Metropolitan Area); Divvy (Chicago, IL); Bay Wheels (San Francisco, CA); Blue Bikes (Boston Metropolitan Area, MA), and Citi Bike New Jersey (Jersey City, NJ). Dockless trips are those starting and ending outside of a docking station on bikes permitted by the system. It does not include trips on other systems in the area; only the specified system. Not all systems allow users to start or end a trip outside of a docking station. Not all systems operate in all months and/or have data available for all months. Data shown only for months where the system operated for the full month and data are available.

Source: BTS Docked Bikeshare Ridership by System and Month, available at: https://data.bts.gov/Research-and-Statistics/Docked-Bikeshare-Ridership-by-System-Year-and-Mont/cvai-skrf

BTS Bikeshare Gateway Opens the Door to Data and Visualizations

To dive further into bikeshare data and ridership trends during Bike Month and throughout the year, the new BTS bikeshare gateway page has plenty to offer. The page is usefully organized to steer people to BTS analysis and to datasets and visualizations on bikeshare infrastructure and ridership.