Ohrn Images:
. . . they really do come.
The new Point Grey Road is a great example of advanced cycling infrastructure that forms part of a network. It continues to attract all sorts of people on bicycles. In fact, my personal indices of infrastructure success are in plain view there, and the number of “index events” is climbing on PGR and all over town.
First index: all ages and abilities riding on bikes. Families with little kids.
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Second index: intersection events where people on bikes have to adjust their path, or give way, or wait for someone also going through the intersection. Check out the traffic at the intersection of PGR and Stephens. This shows bicycle traffic. Bicycles. Waiting for the light to change.
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But the nonsense continues: Spinning opinion? Vancouver installs live counters at bike paths – CTV Vancouver News
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VanCity Buzz does an item on bike stats: Cycling Numbers On the Rise in Vancouver
This year, the Burrard Bridge bike lane marks its fifth year in use, seeing more than 5 million trips since its installation. This summer, the Burrard Bridge bike lane has seen record bike traffic month over month, with July hitting a record number 195,000 bike trips up from 161,000 in July 2013 – a 21 per cent increase. …
The bike network saw improvements made over the summer, with safety improvements at the south end of Burrard Bridge and a new intersection layout at Burrard and Cornwall, in addition to the extension of the bike route out to Point Grey Road. Following construction and improvements, weekday numbers jumped to 1,500 bike trips daily average in June 2014 – a 150 per cent increase compared to the averages prior to the construction of the Seaside Greenway bike route to Point Grey Road. The average weekday number of cyclist trips was 600 in August 2012.
Downtown, Hornby Street also hit a record, with 71,000 cycling trips compared to the previous record of 68,000 trips in 2011. In July 2014, the Dunsmuir Street and Viaduct bike lanes saw the second highest months on record:
- · Dunsmuir Street: 65,000
- · Dunsmuir Viaduct: 66,000
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Here are the stats to date from the City’s website:
Saw that on the news lastnight. I love the bike lanes but I really don’t get why they have to spend $30k per bike counter when there are shortages of bike racks and bike corrals throughout the city. Wouldn’t this boost the profile of cycling more? Toronto had bike racks everywhere.
I think the counters are pretty neat. I like being counted!
$30k sounds like a lot to individuals, but for a big city budget it’s just a tiny drop in the bucket.
I don’t think we need tons of em, but a few seem pretty reasonable to me. The science world one is not really on a major commuting route (mostly recreational traffic), so getting some on the commute routes would be interesting.
The Science World counter registers commuter traffic from Ontario and the bike route along Great Northern Way, both coming into the city. The counts are pretty high by 9 am each day.
The Science World counter has been in place and operational (mostly) for at least 3 years.
So much ado about nothing.
The city has a responsibility to count the usage of the roads and pathways by all types of users. You can’t manage a transportation network, organize signals or plan road works without that data. The city has spent millions installing traffic counters and sensors for heavy vehicle traffic. It would be exceedingly irresponsible not to try to count how many cyclists are using the infrastructure designed for them.
So they can install “permanent” counters or rely on hoses and contractors hired to sit at the side of the road and record passing traffic. If the sensors are accurate enough they will collect better data than the alternatives and end up costing less.
Where I can see room for criticism is the signs “advertising” the numbers. They obviously cost money, but so would hiring someone to put the data into a public-friendly form and publishing it to vancouver.ca.
Do all the critics of the current council who already complain about lack of transparency at a “closed” city hall really want that data buried forever in the engineering department where no citizen could possibly access it?
Nice post, David. Transparency, it seems, is a Wonderland concept, that means exactly what the speaker intends it to mean. No more, no less.
And as to burying the data, it is clear that some critics want some data to be buried, and other data trumpeted in the big megaphones. It’s a simple technique of propaganda 101, and is used constantly to form public opinion and lead people where the speaker and their media want the people to go.
Who wouldn’t love the CTV article?
2 years ago, they counted the “actual” # bikes on Hornby, and found that the city got it right. .
And now, just adding a display to a bike counter is branded an election issue. The counters were put in as part of the Burrard Bridge improvements.
And I’d like to see CTV reporting on the pointless repaving of Broadway by CoV in the last few months. They didn’t even put in a bike lane on Broadway. 🙂
PS – the City has installed nice new bright LED streetlamps at Burrard & Cornwall and at Cypress – does wonders for visibility at night (i.e drivers seeing cyclists)