Super Tuesday was March 5 – Australia’s largest ever visual bike count.
Started in 2007, the count assists local governments by having volunteers at 1222 locations Australia-wide in metropolitan, suburban and regional areas.
Here are the results in Melbourne:
Record numbers of females riding to work
There has been a phenomenal increase in the number of females riding to work in Melbourne.
City bound routes counted in this morning’s Super Tuesday Bike Count showed that females comprised over 50 per cent of riders at a number of intersections in the inner north, where the City of Yarra has invested consistently in improving bike infrastructure.
In Swanston Street in the CBD females comprised 32 per cent of riders.
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This is an increase of 22 percent since the Copenhagen style lands were added to Swanston Street by the City of Melbourne, clearly showing that women will flock to bike commuting when the routes are made bike-friendly.
(Females are considered the ‘indicator species’ of bike network quality.) Overall the count showed staggering increases in the number of bikes coming into the city in the morning peak.
At the Swanston / La Trobe intersection total bikes over the two hour period was 1235, up 62 per cent over the count in 2012.
At the southern end of Swanston Street, at the Flinders Street intersection, 1864 bikes were counted for all directions in the two hour period, an increase of 37 per cent over last year.
On the Main Yarra Trail at Swan Street a total of 899 bikers were on the south side of the river (38% up) and 1093 were on the north side path (22% up) over the 2 hour period.
On the Footscray Road bike path near the Costco store a total of 1450 riders were counted during the peak period, up 33 per cent on the year prior.
A sample of sites was selected to count riders without helmets. About 0.3 per cent of riders were without helmets.
There were 374 count sites in Melbourne, 469 sites in Victoria and 745 across Australia.
