Race on Two Wheels

A RESEARCH SERIES INVESTIGATING THE STATE OF CYCLING IN VANCOUVER THROUGH A RACIAL LENS

What motivates us to cycle? What barriers do we face? Are these motivators and barriers the same across all population groups? What is the link between cycling and our cultural, ethnic, or racial identity?

People are motivated to cycle for all kinds of reasons. While access to high-quality bike infrastructure usually results in higher cycling rates, many researchers in recent years have recognized that cyclists are not a generalizable, homogenous group. Cycling motivators and barriers are nuanced and unique to every individual and may differ based on various elements of our personal identity – including race1,2,3,4,5. There is a prime opportunity to explore this further in Metro Vancouver given the region’s ethnoracial diversity.

Completed projects

Cycling demographics: Cycling demographics: An analysis of race, gender, and electrification among cyclists in Vancouver, Canada

Student lead: Derek Yau, PhD candidate

Cities like Vancouver have made significant investments in cycling infrastructure in recent years, but there’s very little data on who actually rides. Municipal governments across Canada do not routinely collect demographic cyclist data, which makes it difficult to plan for cycling in growing and diverse communities. To help fill this data gap, we conducted a visual survey of over 7,000 cyclists at 17 locations across Vancouver, recording their perceived race, gender, and e-bike usage. This study offers one of the most detailed demographic snapshots of urban cycling patterns in Canada to date. By documenting the racial composition of cyclists on Vancouver’s streets and analyzing how this intersects with gender and electrification, we shed light on who is and isn’t cycling, and where. Our data showed that gender and racial disparities persist throughout the city, which suggests a variety of factors may be influencing cycling access. This work is foundational to advancing work to understand and address the barriers faced by demographic groups underrepresented in cycling.

Key findings:

  • Women (19.5% electrified) used e-bikes at a higher proportion than men (16.7% electrified).
  • White cyclists were overrepresented at all count locations.
  • Men (65.5%) cycled about twice as much as women (34.5%).
  • The highest proportion of women cyclists was observed among mixed race people (52.6% women) and Latin Americans (43.1% women). 
  • About one in six bikes were electrified (17.7%).
  • The highest proportion of e-bike usage was observed among Indigenous people (28.1% electrified) and South Asians (26.8% electrified).
Observed gender distribution of cyclists, disaggregated by race, at 17 count locations in Vancouver.
Observed e-bike usage, disaggregated by race, at 17 count locations in Vancouver.
Difference in observed race versus City of Vancouver census race.

Funding:

  • Mobilizing Justice
  • PHAC/CIHR Applied Public Health Chair

Ongoing projects

How accurate is visual perception? Assessing the ‘agreement’ between perceived and self-reported race of passing cyclists.

Student lead: Derek Yau, PhD candidate
Research period: Summer 2023 – Spring 2024

The lack of culture around collecting race-disaggregated cycling data in Vancouver – and broadly across Canada – results in informal and inconsistent data collection methods that have previously relied on visual perception. For example, visually perceiving a passing cyclist’s race has been used in recent, national data collection initiatives6; though, this method remains untested. Further, outside of the context of cycling research, a large body of literature already exists on the nuances of how racial recognition can be a function of one’s own social and cultural influences7. All of this raises the question of the accuracy and overall ‘appropriateness’ of using visual perception as a formal research method in collecting race-oriented data.

This research project aims to add to this conversation by investigating the overall accuracy of perceiving a passing cyclist’s race, and identifying and examining potential patterns in how their race is perceived by people of different ethnoracial and demographic backgrounds, themselves.

Thank you to all our data collectors and survey participants!
The study is now complete. Stay tuned for more details.

Future projects

Pedaling perspectives: Exploring intersectional barriers and motivators to cycling among ethnic Chinese in Vancouver.

Student lead: Derek Yau, PhD candidate
Research period: Winter – Fall 2024

More details to come! Watch this space!

  1. Barajas JM. doi:10.1007/s11116-018-9955-7 ↩︎
  2. Blickstein S, Brown C. Bicycling Among Black and Latino Women Focus Group Summary Report. Alan M Voorhees Transportation Center, Rutgers. Published online 2016. ↩︎
  3. Lubitow A, Tompkins K, Feldman M. doi:10.1111/cico.12470 ↩︎
  4. Roberts JD, Mandic S, Fryer CS, Brachman ML, Ray R. doi:10.3390/ijerph16081313 ↩︎
  5. Steinbach R, Green J, Datta J, Edwards P. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.01.033 ↩︎
  6. Winters et al. doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2023.101606 ↩︎
  7. Young et al. doi.org/10.1177/1088868311418987 ↩︎