Trends in Bicycling and Walking in Minnesota: A Multi-Year Perspective on the COVID Surge

ABSTRACT

State and local transportation agencies have established bicycle and pedestrian traffic monitoring programs to generate traffic data needed to plan, design, construct, and maintain non-motorized infrastructure. These agencies typically have not cited the need to assess changes in traffic associated with a deadly global pandemic as a rationale for monitoring, but data from these monitoring networks can provide insights into trends and changes associated with exogenous shocks to transportation systems such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers have reported surges in bicycling and walking during the pandemic, but few have described these changes in the context of longer-term trends.