analyzed. This paper presents an effort to fill this gap by tracking household bicycle possession. First, we
gather survey data from 150 countries and extract percentage household bicycle ownership values.
Performing cluster analysis, we determined four groups with the weighted mean percentage ownership
ranging from 20% to 81%. Generally, bicycle ownership was highest in Northern Europe and lowest in
West, Central and North Africa, and Central Asia. We determine worldwide household ownership patterns
and demonstrate a basis for understanding the global impact of cycling as a sustainable transit
mode. Furthermore, we find a lower-bound estimate of the number of bicycles available to the world's
households. We establish that at the global level 42% of households own at least one bicycle, and thus
there are at least 580 million bicycles in private household ownership. Our data are publicly available and
amenable for future analyses.