[IfOnlyYouKnew]

There are (somewhat awkward, but English) statistics for Berlin at https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/verkehr/verkehrsplanung/radver... (No way to link to configured maps, unfortunately).

Some numbers. These are total monthly counts of riders observed at the same 17 measurement points:

                2019      2020

    Sep    1,670,000 2,387,000. + 43 %
    Dec      900,000 1,100,000. + 22 %

That's quite an increase year-over-year! The December number are lower, but possibly more impressive considering it was rather lockdown-ish and general mobility fell somewhat.

It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather.

It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good): People avoid public transport and any single one might opt for a car instead. But because road capacity is fixed (that's income in the analogy), more of it needs to be devoted to the most efficient option, i. e. bikes. So the city converted car to bike lanes, and car traffic is actually down.

[matsemann]

I'm an avid biker, and commute by bike all year around even in harsh nordic winter climate. But my numbers for 2020 are faaar lower than usual. Normally I would bike to and from work 5 times a week, to swimming 3 times a week, to meet a friend for jogging, to the mall, etc. But now all those things are closed, so I use the bike for something maybe once a week instead.

So I hope and believe the numbers will be even greater for 20211, actually. Multiple new people with bikes, and soon people will move about as usual.

[outside1234]

I'm with you. One thing I try to do to combat that is to "commute to my bedroom office via the garage" --> I go for a short loop ride in the morning that replicates my commute length.

I find that it really helps my energy levels and mental state in the same way my commute used to. Obviously, it takes a bit more discipline, but I actually look forward to it - a chance to check in on the neighborhood etc.

Another hint is it do something new on the route every day. It has grown to be quite a mental challenge to figure out a street or alley (or way of hooking things up) that I haven't taken before!

[ccozan]

Interesting enough, my "commute" is now walking the dog around the area, starting in the kitchen ( or whereever the dog - a 2 year husky!, is waiting for me ) and ending up in the office "room". The fresh air and the 20-35 mins walk is really ideal to kick start my brain for the work. Ideally the walk is without the phone, this helps me to really disconnect.

[anonfornoreason]

I have heard this called a faux-mute, catchy name

[skeeter2020]

I do something similar, sometimes even riding to work and back without ever going inside.

[dmtroyer]

this is a great idea! i really miss my bike commute.

[patrickk]

My experience echoes yours. I love biking to work, especially with an e-bike, and I normally did it five days a week, I even started blogging about my experiences[1]. With the right gear, cycling is really practical form of transport for me to completely avoid unnecessary covid risks on public transport.

Now with lockdowns, I'm not biking nearly as much, the weekly five-a-side football is closed, there's nothing open, so little motivation to walk around town, and so on.

[1] https://ampedcycling.com/is-an-e-bike-actually-worth-it/

[ska]

It's not hard to imagine a situation where normally avid/active cyclist are taking fewer trips (since they aren't going to an office 5 days a week or whatever) but this loss is dwarfed by normally occasional non-cycling people taking more trips than average.

The latter group is likely two orders of magnitude larger than the former, so the interesting thing will be if some people become "converts" as it were, when the restrictions are released. I can see arguments both for and against.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of this in a couple of years, but comparing areas of long term disruption (e.g. USA) vs. shorter (e.g. New Zealand) but that also has all the usual problems of comparison.

[CydeWeys]

Similar situation here. I live in NYC and commuted year-round to work via bicycle for 5 years straight ... and then COVID happened, I haven't even been allowed into the office in 9 months, and my bicycling activity has correspondingly plummeted off a cliff. I now do most of my biking on weekends (for errands and such), which was far from true before March.

So, it's amazing how much the cycling numbers here have gone up even with people like me staying home. I'm looking forward to seeing how many people are cycling once it's all over. Will people like me going back to cycling be added on top of all the others who switched from subway to cycling, or will they go back to subway?

[low_common]

I did the exact opposite as you. I was a commuter biker before Covid and then once that stopped, I got Strava and took my bike all over the five boroughs. I was biking 100 miles a week until December when it got a little too cold for me. I added a gravel bike to my collection and took that out of the city on weekends. 2020 was the year of the bike!

[CydeWeys]

I've just been doing lots of running instead as exercise. I don't actually enjoy a lot of the biking in the city that much. It's too often too crowded and/or feels just a little bit unsafe because of driver misbehavior. I've done the whole 100 km ride up to Nyack and back on 9W thing and ... those cars man.

[low_common]

Biking in the city is its own beast - no bones about that.

[Moru]

I started up the old Turf app [1] for having some goal while biking. It's a great way of finding new routes you haven't seen before. Perfect for a short lunch-ride or in the night after the kids are in bed. It's a bit low on zones in the rest of the world but the nordic countries have a lot. England recently got an upswing too so getting new zones the whole time. And if you wish for zones or leave the app running over the night, someone will notice you and add zones for you. Ofcourse there are some crazy competing going on too [2]. I'm not quite there yet...

[1] https://turfgame.com/

[2] https://turfvasterbotten.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/eat-sleep-...

[analog31]

I read somewhere about the idea of a "fake commute" where you go for a ride of equivalent duration every day. I did that for a while, but have switched to taking a long walk every morning. I've gotten the winter bike out, but have barely used it this year.

[vesinisa]

I have to second that this is exactly my situation as well. Since my elementary school years some two decades ago, I don't think I ever cycled so little in one year as in 2020. Bicycle is my #1 transport but due to forced remote work and generally low level of activity outside home I haven't had the need to go much anywhere. (I won't even begin with the massively detrimental effects on my fitness level.)

That being said, I sincerely hope people who took up cycling during the pandemic will continue to do so 2021+ forward. More cyclists = more planning focus on cycling = better & safer cycling infrastructure.

[btbuildem]

Same here. But I've seen a ton of people on bikes this summer, and by the looks of it a lot of them were new riders. Bike stores were cleared out of inventory, and bike shops / coops overloaded with customers. There's been a definite surge in cycling where I live.

[ogre_codes]

Similar here. I slacked for a while but when my fitness started slipping made an effort to get out almost daily just for a spin. Not training, just decompressing and stretching the legs so when the weekend comes my buddies don't kill me out out mountain bike ride.

[dutch3000]

same situation. my commuter bike has been hanging on the wall since March. moving more into weekend, MTB rides with my family. i find it very hard to get motivated to just ride a loop for exercise. the utility of commuting into work really motivated me for some reason.

[CaptArmchair]

> It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather.

That statistic only observes a change in behaviour. It doesn't explain why it changed.

So, I think that claim can/should be falsified:

If there's an increase in bike usage, that's not because people feel the weather - in it's own regard - is less of an impediment to prefer biking over public transport. It's because people choose enduring changing weather conditions over accepting serious risk to their health for the sake of convenience.

> It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good

According to Wikipedia [1]

> There are three necessary preconditions for this situation to arise:[citation needed] > the good in question must be an inferior good, > there must be a lack of close substitute goods, and > the goods must constitute a substantial percentage of the buyer's income, but not such > a substantial percentage of the buyer's income that none of the associated normal > goods are consumed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

So, if the only other close alternate to bicycling was public transportation, and other options (car) are because their costs outweigh the benefits, then biking would be a Giffen good.

This can be explained either because the perceived costs of the alternative - public transportation - became prohibitively expensive in terms of an increased health risk and the potentially associated costs that come with that risk (death, disabilities, healthcare costs, income loss,...). Or because people are now more willing to accept changing weather conditions (per your claim).

Of course the only way to confirm this is to actually do a survey and gauge the motivations that prompted a population to change their behaviour.

As an anecdotal aside: I was a heavy user of public transportation. I switched to going on foot, or taking my bike to get around exactly because of the pandemic.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

As to weather, I was commenting on the relative number between summer and winter. In both years, they hold up better than I would have thought, at around 50%. That would fit with, for example, commuters using the bike year-round, with the other half in summer consisting of tourism, generally increased activity, joyrides, etc.

As to Giffen: people are shifting public transport -> car & bike. The "budget" (road capacity) is fixed and close to full utilisation. Increased demand with inelastic supply results "inflation", which is the somewhat convoluted way the income effect comes about. Aaaand... yeah, I can't quite remember how I made the next part fit. so you may be right.

[mswann]

General mobility in Berlin 2020 compared to 2019 [0] according to Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in:

  Sep  -5 % to -13 %
  Dec -20 % to -41 %  [incomplete data]

[0] https://www.covid-19-mobility.org/current-mobility/

[llampx]

Up until early September the weather was quite warm and the COVID rates were low. Both were not the case in December.

[Steltek]

It'd be interesting to see the corresponding public transit numbers. In the US, I'm not optimistic about a bike revolution lasting past covid. We've seen some new bike infra being deployed in Boston but not much more than we'd be getting anyway.

When you say car traffic, I presume congestion and not volume of cars. I'm sure volume is down overall and I recall from discussions about congestion pricing, even a 10% decrease in volume can result in congestion completely dissipating. In normal times, Induced Demand would lead to volume going back up as transit users convert back to cars.

[sremani]

Most US Public Transportation agencies publish their KPIs.

DFW Metro: https://dart.org/about/dartkpi.asp

[jamil7]

I'm hoping that some of the pop-up bike lanes we had around the city during the summer due to the lockdown will either return this year or drive some decision making around bike infrastructure in the city, although it always seems too little to late and to move so slowly. With an increase in cyclists last year we also sadly had an increase in cyclist deaths.

[Mauricebranagh]

Probably because people avoided public transport (busses and trams) you need to see this data as well.