Bikes are booming but is Western Australia our motorcycle heaven?

Australia is experiencing a motorcycle boom according to the recently released Australian Bureau of Statistics motor vehicle census. Since 1999 the number of registered motorbikes has increased by a whopping 18.7% nationally compared to an increase in the number of cars of only 9.7%.

New South Wales is the fastest growing motorcycle state with a 24.2% increase in the number of registered bikes over the past five years and Queensland is a close second at 22.0%.
In the ACT the increase in the number of motorbikes was as high as 20.6%. That means that there is now one bike to every 26 cars in the ACT – over 7,000 on the road.

But it seems that the biggest bike lovers live in Western Australia, with more bikes per head of population than any other state. For every 1,000 people in WA there are 25 motorbikes, five more than the national rate.
WIMA members in the Northern Territory might find it hardest to find a ride buddy with only 3,200 bikes in the Territory – just 16 motorbikes for every 1,000 people. Surprisingly, New South Wales also has only 16 motorbikes for every 1,000 people but fortunately most of those live just a short ride from one another in Sydney.

Victorians would do well to park on the pavement to avoid more cars per head of population than any other state in Australia.

The ratio of cars to motorbikes gives a measure of commuters' personal transport preference.The lower the ratio, the greater the number of bikes on the road for every car. While the Northern Territory has the lowest ratio, its been losing ground over the last five years because the number of bikes has been dropping. On the other hand, both Queensland and Western Australia have a low number of cars for every bike (22 cars for every bike in Queensland and 23 cars for every bike in Western Australia) and the growth in motorcycle registrations is continuing.

So which state is bike heaven?
We've combined the car to bike ratio, the car to population rate and the bike to population rate (with extra weighting on this one) to give you the Bike heaven index.
By this index, Western Australia gets the bike heaven prize!