Cyclists Revealed as Earth Day Heroes

April 22, 2024

Strava data reveals Top 10 US city rankings & 31 Million Kilograms of Carbon Saved

SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 22, 2024/ENDURANCE SPORTSWIRE/ – In honor of Earth Day, Strava, the leading digital community for active people with more than 120 million athletes, has released new data illustrating the significant impact athletes are having through commuting. Leveraging Metro, the leading platform for active transportation data, it has identified the top 10 U.S. cities with the most commutes and additional commuting trends.

According to Strava research, in the US, more/improved bike infrastructure would encourage 55% of respondents to commute more by bike/walk/run. To further Metro’s mission of making human-powered travel safe, accessible and efficient, Metro works with more than 3,500 approved partners – from urban planners and trail networks to city governments and safe-infrastructure advocates – to collaborate with hundreds of states, nonprofits and communities to identify opportunities for investment and evaluate the impact of infrastructure changes – all completely free of charge.

The aggregated, anonymized and contextualized datasets revealed that cycling commuters saved millions of kilograms of carbon from being released into the atmosphere, and that the metropolitan areas of New York, San Francisco Bay Area and Denver are the most avid adopters of cycling commutes. In 2023, the total amount of carbon saved in the US from cycling commutes totaled 31,404,458 kilograms.

Other key findings from Strava’s global community of more than 120 million athletes included:

The top ten commuting cities, and the share of cyclists who commute in each:

• Portland, OR: 36%
• Chicago, IL: 37%
• Seattle, WA: 35%
• Washington, DC: 34%
• New York, NY: 36%
• San Francisco Bay Area, CA: 36%
• Minneapolis-St. Paul, MI: 32%
• Boston, MA: 33%
• Los Angeles, CA: 30%
• Denver, CO: 33%

The aggregated carbon effect of bike commuting is staggering

• Cumulatively, the 36% of cyclists who logged cycling commutes in Portland, OR saved more than 617,000 kilograms of carbon, and the cycling commuters in New York City saved over 2,300,000 kilograms of carbon.

Los Angeles commuters are the long distance kings & queens

• L.A cycling commuters have an average trip distance of 9.5 miles per commute.
• Chicago has the shortest average commute of 7.6 miles per commute.

With the highest share of cyclists commuting, SF and NY were joined by Portland and Chicago

• In each of these four cities, between 36% and 37% of all Strava cyclists logged commutes.

Commuters like efficiency

• The most popular reason for commuting by bike/walk/run was that it allows people to exercise at the same time (88%). This was followed by “it’s more enjoyable than driving” (84%) and the positive impact on the environment (70%).

Millennials lead the way

• The 30-39 age group is consistently the highest adopters of bike commuting, with 30% of all riders in the age cohort in Chicago and Portland logging commute rides.

Bike commuting is gender-blind

• There is no statistically significant difference in the commuting rates between men and women who upload commute data.

Tom Knights, Strava Metro UK, said: “Strava’s Carbon Savings Tool helps to show our global community the real-world impact of their activities when they tag their trip as a commute. In turn, this helps our Strava Metro team to work with cities and urban planners around the world to secure investment for active transportation that makes every day bicycle trips and commutes safer and more accessible.

For this year’s Earth Day, we are launching a new commute Challenge to encourage our global community to explore active travel. By providing more visibility on carbon savings, we look to inspire individual action towards a common goal of reducing carbon emissions globally. ”

Since its inception 11 years ago, Metro has reached significant milestones including making the tool freely accessible to partners in 2020 and launching a carbon savings calculation tool on Strava for athletes and one on Metroview, which aggregates estimated carbon savings from the Strava community, for qualifying partners. Additionally, the active transportation partner ecosystem has grown to include more than 3,500 partners.

To celebrate Earth Day, Strava is launching its Earth Week: Commute to Curb Carbon Challenge in support of EARTHDAY.ORG, to encourage more people to log commutes on Strava and promote active travel.

To learn more about Strava Metro, visit the website.

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About Strava

Strava is the leading digital community for active people with more than 120 million athletes, in more than 190 countries. The platform offers a holistic view of your active lifestyle, no matter where you live, which sport you love and/or what device you use. Everyone belongs on Strava when they are pursuing an active life. Join the community, find motivation and discover new experiences with a Strava subscription.

Visit www.strava.com for more information and connect with Strava on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

About EARTHDAY.ORG:

EARTHDAY.ORG’s founders created and organized the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Since then, EARTHDAY.ORG has mobilized over 1 billion people annually on Earth Day, and every other day, to protect the planet. EARTHDAY.ORG’s mission is to diversify, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide. EARTHDAY.ORG is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 150,000 partners in nearly 192 countries to build environmental democracy. Learn more at EARTHDAY.ORG. It’s not a day, it’s a movement.