COMMENTARY: Cycling in Bloomington's strategy for luring business

Bloomberg reports that 3.9 percent of workers here are using pedal power rather than horsepower to regularly get to and from the job, which means we’re definitely on the radar.

(NOTE: The city of Bloomington’s own website claims the national No. 2 spot for combined walking/biking commuters — with 16.6 percent of workers walking and 5.2 percent biking. As with Bloomberg, the city’s source is the U.S. Census Bureau. Not sure here what the numbers discrepancy means, but we’ll go with Bloomberg for the moment only because it names its Top 25, allowing discussion on the place of bicycling in the community rather than on the ranking itself.)

Bloomberg’s 25 includes other college towns. Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern, ranks 15th, with 5.3 percent of commuters bicycling.

Madison, Wisconsin, with its large state university, comes in at No. 9, with 6.2 percent of its workforce pedaling to the job.

Most big bike cities are on the West Coast, with Davis, California, home to the University of California Davis campus, leading the pack. There, almost a fifth — 19.1 percent of workers — are bicycle commuters. In all, eight of the top 25 bicycle cities are in the Golden State. That includes some towns that are often, like Bloomington, identified as “college towns.”