Census Bureau: More Chicago workers walking, biking to work

People who work in Chicago are more than twice as likely to ride a bike to their job than the national average, according to a statement released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

More than 1.2 million people work in Chicago, according to 2008-2012 statistics from the the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Nationally, .6 percent of commuters biked to work. Meanwhile, 1.3 percent of the people who worked in Chicago used a bicycle to get to their job, the Census Bureau said. In addition, 6.4 percent of workers in Chicago walked to work.

Fourteen years ago, only .5 percent of people who worked in Chicago biked to their jobs, the Census Bureau said.

“Through efforts to increase local transportation options, Chicago, along with many other large U.S. cities, has contributed to the increase in the number of people who bike to work,” said Brian McKenzie, of the U.S. Census Bureau. “This information shapes our understanding of how people get to work and how this may change across cities in the coming years.”

The Census Bureau said it is the first time they studied whether people bike or walk to work.

Some other notable highlights in the American Community Survey include:

-Among the 1,213,901 workers in Chicago, 26.7 percent took public transportation to work, 1.3 percent biked, 6.4 percent walked, and 4.2 percent worked from home.

-The average travel time to work was 33.5 minutes.