Cycle growth continues & Grafton Bridge numbers

The reporting was on hiatus for two months, and then failed to appear in time for AT’s last board meeting, but we finally have the cycle count stats for December 2012 and January 2013 (see last page of linked document).

And as we had hoped, numbers keep increasing – plus 12.7% in December, and plus 3.8% in January. Not too bad at all.

There’s still a lot of month-by-month variation in the growth (probably mostly due to weather) – and the part of the count that is publicised still only covers 9 counters (which is fair enough, as including the 5 new counters that went live in November last year would skew the percentage growth picture, unless you have at least a full year of comparative numbers).

Out of interest, CAA reviewed the cycle counts for one of the newer counters, specifically Grafton Bridge. Here are some graphical stats for December and January:

  • Grafton Bridge 01Late January had a bumper crop with [daily total flows] up to 500-700 cyclists on many days. Those are levels comparable to Northwestern Cycleway flows.
  • Clearly Grafton Bridge is is a “working man/womans cycle route” – look how the numbers fall every weekend.
  • Same for the period over Christmas and the holidays – down to less than half the usual.
  • Eastbound versus westbound flows are pretty much identical at any time (quite unlike, for example, on Tamaki Drive during the morning). As many people ride to work to places east of the bridge, as west of it, which shows how important a link it is.

We also had a look at the distribution over the day, for one of the busier days, 21 January:

  • Grafton Bridge 02Flows peaked just after work finishes for a lot of people in the CBD, with the [15 minute interval] after 17:15 being particularly busy – obviously, a lot of you can’t wait to get your legs moving after a day at the office.
  • Again, we are clearly looking at working folks, as the “fever curve” really looks pretty much like that of the car-driving part of our society. Another example that cycling is transport, not (just) a leisure activity.

We hope that these kind of stats become a bit more accessible in the future, but in the meantime, its great to be able to discuss them with you here (thanks to Auckland Transport, CAA has been permitted access to the database and are allowed to share the information, so if you require data from any of the 15 counters, please contact us).

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