Cycling Statistics 2026 (Participation, E-bikes & Market)

A record 112 million Americans rode a bike at least once in 2024 — about 35% of everyone aged 3 and older, the highest share since tracking began, according to PeopleForBikes. Cycling is no longer just recreation: it is a global growth industry, a transport mode, and an electrified one at that. This page pulls together the latest participation, market-size, e-bike, bike-share, demographic and health data for 2025–2026.

How many people ride bikes in the US?

US ridership hit a record in 2024. PeopleForBikes' biennial participation study — based on a survey of 16,000 adults and consistent methodology since 2014 — found 112 million Americans rode a bike at least once that year, or 35% of people aged 3 and older (PeopleForBikes, 2024). That is the highest participation rate the study has recorded.

The standout shift is among kids. Youth participation (ages 3–17) jumped from 49% to 56% between studies, reversing a steady slide since 2018. Ridership rose 9% for ages 3–9 and 15% for ages 10–17. On the demand side, mountain biking drew over nine million US participants and BMX nearly 4.5 million in 2023, per Statista.

• 112 million US riders in 2024 — a record (PeopleForBikes).
• 56% youth participation, up from 49% (PeopleForBikes).
• 53% of riders say they worry about being hit by a car (PeopleForBikes).

How many cyclists are there worldwide?

Globally, the bicycle is the most common vehicle on earth. The world's bicycle fleet is estimated at well over 1 billion, with some 2025 estimates putting it above 1.5 billion — far outnumbering cars (Discerning Cyclist). Roughly 42% of households worldwide own at least one bicycle. China holds the largest national fleet, followed by the US (RunRepeat).

Usage intensity varies enormously by country. The Netherlands remains the cycling benchmark, where bikes are a primary daily transport mode for a majority of the population — a level no large car-dependent country comes close to matching.

How big is the global bicycle market?

The bicycle business is large and compounding. Grand View Research valued the global bicycle market at $84.25 billion in 2025, projecting it to reach $135.02 billion by 2030 at a 9.9% CAGR (Grand View Research, 2025). Asia Pacific held about 34.6% of the market in 2025, the single largest region. Growth is driven by daily mobility, fitness use, and the electric transition.

How fast is the e-bike market growing?

Electrification is the headline story in cycling. The global e-bike market was valued at $68.34 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach $180.25 billion by 2035, a 10.18% CAGR (Precedence Research, 2025). The Asia Pacific region alone accounted for roughly $40.3 billion of 2025 revenue — about 81% of the global total, with China the clear front-runner.

On a unit basis, more than 42 million e-bikes were sold worldwide in 2024, per Statista. Asia-Pacific drove roughly 31 million of those (about 74% of volume), Europe added 7.2 million (~17%), and US sales reached about 1.1 million units — a 28% jump over 2023.

How big is the US e-bike market specifically?

In the US, e-bikes have gone from a niche category to a market pillar in a few years. PeopleForBikes' 2024 market analysis put e-bike value at about $1.63 billion — roughly 30% of the total US bicycle market — even as the overall US bike market softened to around $5.1 billion (PeopleForBikes, 2024).

Imports tell the demand story most clearly: an estimated 1.7 million e-bikes were brought into the US in 2024 by roughly 900 unique businesses, versus about 990,000 units from just over 300 importers in 2023. Direct-to-consumer sales also surged, with hundreds of thousands of units sold straight off brand websites — a channel that effectively doubled the previously visible US e-bike sales picture.

How much is bike-share being used?

Shared micromobility is setting records, and e-bikes are doing the heavy lifting. New York's Citi Bike, the largest US bike-share system, logged more than 45 million trips in 2024 on roughly 37,000 bikes — with record-breaking ridership every month versus the prior year (Lyft Urban Solutions).

The electric share is striking: e-bikes accounted for 66% of all Citi Bike trips in 2024 despite being only about 40% of the fleet. Momentum carried into 2025, when the system set an all-time single-day record above 205,000 rides in August, again 66% on e-bikes. Citi Bike ridership has more than doubled since 2019.

• 45M+ Citi Bike trips in 2024 (Lyft Urban Solutions).
• 66% of those trips were on e-bikes (Lyft Multimodal Report, 2025).
• 205,000+ rides in a single day — a record set in August 2025 (Lyft Urban Solutions).

What do cycling demographics look like?

Cycling still skews male and younger, but the gap is closing. Globally, men are several times more likely than women to ride on the road, and the disparity is widest where infrastructure and safety are weakest (UNRIC). In the US, men are roughly 17 percentage points more likely than women to commute by bike. The most active age band tends to be 20–30 year-olds.

Two trends point the other way: women's cycling participation has grown markedly over the past decade, and ridership among people 65 and older is rising — a shift the broader literature links partly to e-bikes lowering the physical barrier to entry (buycycle).

How many people commute by bike?

Bike commuting is a small but recovering slice of US travel. Census American Community Survey data has historically put bike commuting at roughly 0.5–0.6% of all US workers — about 872,000 people in the 2013–2017 estimates (US Census Bureau). Numbers dropped sharply in 2020–2021 with remote work, then rebounded toward pre-pandemic levels in the 2022 estimates, per the League of American Bicyclists.

Context matters: in the US, recreation now leads the reasons people ride, with the largest single transportation use being trips to social and recreation activities rather than the office. In leading European cycling cities, by contrast, daily commute mode share runs many multiples higher than the US average.

What is cycling's economic and health impact?

The public-health math behind cycling is substantial. Research estimates that cycling delivers roughly €119 billion a year in external benefits across the EU-27, with about €80 billion of that tied to avoided premature deaths (latest available, 2021 baseline; Springer Nature, 2025). A net 30,272 premature deaths are avoided each year in the EU-27 thanks to cycling.

National studies reinforce the pattern. In France, regular cycling is estimated to avert roughly 1,900 deaths and about €5 billion in intangible costs annually, with researchers calculating that every kilometer cycled saves around €1 in medical costs (PMC / Institut Pasteur). These figures help explain why cities increasingly treat bike infrastructure as health spending, not just transport spending.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

PeopleForBikes — US Bicycling Participation Report (2024) & Electric Bicycle Market Insights (2024) · Grand View Research — Bicycle Market (2025) · Precedence Research — E-bike Market (2025) · Statista — Cycling statistics & facts and global e-bike volume · Lyft Urban Solutions — Bikeshare records (2025) · US Census Bureau — Bike-to-work data · League of American Bicyclists — Commuting trends · Springer Nature — Socio-economic impacts of cycling in the EU (2025) · Institut Pasteur / PMC — Health and climate potential of cycling in France.