Shifting Gears: As Citi Bike Ridership Spikes, Share of Women Users Increases

This post is part of our comprehensive look at how COVID-19 is reshaping the mobility landscape. For more original research, project work, and thought leadership from the Sam Schwartz team, visit the COVID-19 Response + Analysis center.

By Matthew Dwyer, Dorottya Miketa, AICP, PP, Ben Rosen-Filardo, EIT, and Daniel Schack, AICP

On September 12, 2020, Citi Bike set a record for single day ridership, with 103,139 trips—surpassing the previous record by 3,000 rides. This peak is part of a months-long upswing in ridership, as the system expands to new areas (Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx) and travelers shift from other transit services (see our previous posting on the overall recovery of biking, compared to subway ridership). To determine who is driving this surge, we used publicly available Citi Bike data to take a closer look at the demographics of riders through August 2020. We found that while overall ridership is changing, women are representing an increasingly greater share of the riding population.

More Women are Biking

Female ridership increased sharply in the past six months. As shown in the chart below, at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 the proportion of women riders increased 3 percentage points for Annual Subscribers and 4 percentage points for Single Ride/Day Pass customers, compared to March 2019. By August 2020, this trend continued, with the female share of riders increasing 7 percentage points and 3 percentage points for Annual Subscribers and Single Ride/Day Pass customers from the same month in 2019, respectively. While the increase is significant, men continue to represent a substantial majority of Citi Bike users. This gender disparity is similar to other large bike share programs in the country such as Chicago’s Divvy, where overall 2020 ridership has been 34 percent female and 66 percent male. There is also a considerable seasonal variation in the gender of riders, with the share of female riders having a noticeable dip in the winter months.

Possible explanations for this shift could be the decrease of transit use during the pandemic and the overall reduction in vehicle traffic on city roadways, making casual cyclists feel more comfortable riding on city streets. The expansion of protected bicycle lanes during the past two years, and particularly the rapid installation of 9 miles of temporary protected lanes to accommodate the uptick in cyclists, may also be a factor as women are more likely to cycle on streets that feel safe, according to research from Quartz. Infrastructure supporting bicycling is crucial. Research from the same Quartz article has also shown that cycling can be more dangerous for women, as drivers are more likely to pass closer to female cyclists than to male cyclists. The launch of the Citi Bike Critical Workforce Membership Program, providing free year-long memberships to essential workers, played a role as it opened bicycle access to this predominantly female workforce.

Gaps in safe cycling infrastructure are apparent when you look at the spatial distribution of where women bike. In August 2019 and 2020 (figure below), lower proportions of female riders used docks in Midtown Manhattan where there are few protected bicycle lanes. Higher proportions of female riders can be seen in areas where there is a network of protected lanes, or where streets are less congested and quieter in residential neighborhoods. Moreover, docks in or adjacent to parks such as on Governors Island or near Central Park are more heavily used by women.

As noted in our previous blog post, Citi Bike ridership is following a different pattern than it did before the pandemic, with smaller morning peaks on weekdays, and ridership steadily increasing throughout the day for larger evening peaks. Ridership over the weekends is similarly spread throughout the day with noticeable differences in the total number of trips taken year-over-year. The proportion of female riders during weekdays and weekends is also shifting. Prior to the pandemic, women accounted for only 26 percent of weekday riders as compared to 32 percent of weekend riders, likely because women are less likely to commute to work by biking for a variety of reasons. Both these proportions have increased in 2020 with women now accounting for 33 percent and 36 percent of weekday and weekend riders, respectively.

Going Forward

While many factors play into these demographic changes, the growth of Citi Bike is a critical part of changing transportation patterns that may transcend the pandemic. Having a robust and connected network of bicycling infrastructure helps create a more resilient and equitable transportation system. Going forward, the City can foster this new wave of cyclists by continuing to create an interconnected protected bicycle lane network so that users of all abilities feel safe, and growing the Citi Bike service area to neighborhoods outside of the business districts where women are more likely to make bicycle trips. The City has outlined many of these strategies in the Green Wave: A Plan for Cycling in New York City, which when implemented will enhance safety on streets for all New Yorkers.

Sources:

https://www.citibikenyc.com/system-data

https://qz.com/quartzy/1745124/why-women-dont-cycle-and-what-cities-can-do-about-it/

https://genderpolicyreport.umn.edu/bicycles-gender-and-risk/#:~:text=Recent%20research%20here%20at%20the,cyclists%20than%20on%20male%20cyclists.