How good is life in Bend? Pretty good, for most, we hope.

The city tries to measure people’s perception of Bend’s quality of life every few years through surveys. And the most recent one shows an uptick from 70% of people feeling it is good or excellent in 2022 to 81% feeling it is good or excellent in 2024.

That’s good, even excellent.

A city of Bend community survey completed in December shows “perceptions of quality of life in Bend have improved following a decline in 2022,” according to a presentation for the Bend City Council.

If you go back 10 years, though, people thought Bend life was better. In 2013 and 2014, 90% of those surveyed found the quality of life was good or excellent.

A survey is just a survey, of course. We hope councilors will ask lots of questions about the results. For instance, in the presentation, it’s not labeled what results are from a more scientific phone and text survey that used quotas aimed at getting a more accurate sample and what is from an online survey. We did email on Sunday and ask about it, but unsurprisingly on Sunday evening or early on a federal holiday morning, we didn’t get an answer.

The most bewildering result we saw, at least the result most at odds with our experience, was the perception of 65% of people in 2024 that pedestrian and bike safety is good or excellent. Maybe that’s from people who don’t bike to work or try to walk across many intersections. There are some streets and crossings that have been dramatically improved. In most places, a pedestrian would be a fool to assume a car will stop for a pedestrian crossing at an intersection. It’s certainly just smart for pedestrians to be careful. But take a step onto a marked crosswalk in broad daylight and the expectation in many places is that the cars will zip right through, maybe even with the drivers staring at their phones.