The Cost Effectiveness of Active Transportation Investments

Around here we love data, so as soon as I sent the latest safety in numbers data around the office, it took Andy less than an hour to try to one-up me. He passed along this graph showing Portland’s expenditures on biking and walking, transit, and motor vehicles (1995 – 2010) along side the number of new trips by those modes (1990 – 2008). There were increases in the number of commuters for all three modes. What the graph makes clear is how cost effective the biking and walking investments were. The city spent about 11 times the amount on motor vehicle infrastructure that they spent on active transportation per new commuter.

Hopefully, you can read the graph. If not, I’m happy to email it. (Request it at darren [at] bikeleague.org.) The blue bar is the total expenditures (1995 – 2010). The red bar is the increase is daily Portland commuters.  The black line towards the bottom is the estimated cost of complete Portland’s 2030 Bicycle Master Plan.

~Darren Flusche
League Policy Analyst