Because I'm nerdy I've rolled a bike count into my neighbourhood walk. I've now done three counts on Richmond and Adelaide on the western end of the protected bike lanes to get a sense of the breakdown in traffic. Here are my results.
52% cyclists! Richmond at Bathurst, 5-5:30 Sept 24. Sunny and warm.
25% bikes. (108 cars, 35 bikes) 10pm Oct 1. Cool, dark but dry. (No screenshot)
48% bikes on Adelaide near Portland. 8:30 am Oct 2. Sunny but cool. For this count I used the Counterpoint App on the suggestion of a someone on Twitter. The data gets shared so anyone can download and do fancy stuff with it.
It's a huge jump from before the cycle tracks. In the City's one and only cordon count of who travels by bike into and out of downtown, Adelaide and Richmond were very low. The count, which took place on late September 2010, counted 160 bikes over an entire hour at 8am on Adelaide. If I used my count this morning as an average for the hour, we have seen a 450% increase to 700 bikes!
On Richmond the jump is even higher, from 85 bikes per hour at 5pm to 900! That's over 1000% increase!
This is what it looks like now:
(No, I didn't add a sound track. I was sitting outside a cafe with some "calming" electronic music.)
Next step: get an estimate of the 7am to 7pm bike count so I can compare the volume over the day to the 2010 cordon count.
Comments
Urban Scrambler (not verified)
What this means is bicycles
Sat, 10/03/2015 - 10:11What this means is bicycles are 50% of the traffic but only allocated 25% of the road space
hamish (not verified)
Nice work; thanks.
Mon, 10/05/2015 - 13:44Nice work; thanks.
Alex Korobchevsky (not verified)
Will you be able to estimate
Tue, 10/06/2015 - 12:55Will you be able to estimate the capacity of the RA cycle tracks Herb? My theory is that they will become congested in the medium term especially when additional feeder routes are opened (such as Railpath south). We will eventually need more East West cycle tracks. But in the short term bike parking is probably more urgent.
Lisa (not verified)
I think it's great that more
Wed, 10/14/2015 - 05:30I think it's great that more people are now taking up cycling! Looking for more data from you to see if there is indeed a significant increase/surge in number of those taking up cycling.
selkie (not verified)
loving the richmond lanes in
Tue, 10/20/2015 - 09:48loving the richmond lanes in the morning at 6 a.m. - but truck/car parking in them problematic - this morning from Sherbourne to Yonge - 2 trucks, three cars in that short distance.
Alex Korobchevsky (not verified)
Checked with City Cycling and
Mon, 10/26/2015 - 13:28Checked with City Cycling and Councillor McConnell's office - bollards will be installed this week but the gap on Adelaide around Yonge Street will stay on for at least another month while Hydro finishes their work. It is unclear how cyclists will be getting past two new courier delivery zones (I suspect they will still have to merge with traffic)