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Here’s the surprising fact of the day: Of the 50 largest cities in the United States, there are five cities where walking to work is less popular than it is in Phoenix.
The obvious expectation would be that Phoenix is dead last, because who in their right mind walks anywhere when temperatures are routinely approaching 120 degrees in the summer?
See also:
–Phoenix Has the Sixth-Most Pedestrian Deaths in the Country
According to a new U.S. Census Bureau report on walking and bicycling to work, a grand total of 1.8 percent of people in Phoenix walk to work.
The only large cities with lower rates of walkers are Mesa (which doesn’t really count, at 1.6 percent), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (1.6 percent), Jacksonville, Florida (1.4 percent), Wichita, Kansas (1.3 percent), and Fort Worth, Texas (1.2 percent).
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Three cities — Dallas, San Jose, and Arlington — had the same rate of people walking to work as Phoenix.
The report specifically states that people who work from home don’t count, so that blows up our only theory.
Perhaps just as surprising as people walking to work in Phoenix, there are also people riding a bike to work — 0.7 percent of people in Phoenix. That’s actually a rate about in the middle of the 50 biggest cities.
Meanwhile, Tucson is on the higher end of both walking and biking to work, at 3.6 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.
Statewide, the rate of people bicycling to work is above the national average, and the rate of people walking to work is only slightly below average.
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