Using data col­lected via the Amer­i­can Com­mu­nity Sur­vey, that sorta sub-census that deter­mines how fed­eral and state dol­lars are dis­trib­uted every year, the Trans­port Politic took the largest 30 U.S. cities and tab­u­lated the changes in their com­mut­ing habits from 2000 to 2009.

Some of the results are star­tling; some are hardly sur­pris­ing. First, Bal­ti­more is sec­ond among those cities–to Port­land, Ore., naturally–for gains in cycling as over­all share of com­mut­ing trips. The exact gain is 200.6 per­cent to Portland’s 230 per­cent. Which is really not too shabby, and should prob­a­bly be taken as the result of a com­bi­na­tion of things, includ­ing the city gen­er­ally get­ting safer, an influx of young peo­ple with dif­fer­ent habits, and the City of Bal­ti­more tak­ing ini­tia­tive on improv­ing things for bik­ers in the city.

Now for the bad news: That 200 per­cent gain doesn’t add up to much. Cycling still only accounts for 1 per­cent of all com­mutes in Baltimore.

And now for even more bad news. More peo­ple in Bal­ti­more are dri­ving. The biggest loss in any par­tic­u­lar mode of trans­porta­tion comes in mass tran­sit, with a dis­ap­point­ing 12.7 per­cent decline. That said, we’re still in the upper third as far as tran­sit as a total share, with 17 per­cent of com­muters get­ting around on buses or trains. And, in fact, most cities did decline in tran­sit use with the very notable excep­tion of Los Ange­les, which has put sus­tained and con­cen­trated effort into improv­ing its tran­sit sys­tem in the past decade. Another excep­tion is Wash­ing­ton D.C., which boasts one of the best sub­way net­works in the world, with an increase of 12 percent.

Tags: commuting, cycling