When reviewing the Auckland Transport cycle counter statistics (CAA’s access discussed here), a while ago we stumbled across a real oddity – lots of cyclists were using the Northwestern Cycleway to ride to town. But a lot less were coming back.
As you can see from the results of last week, this pattern still holds true – the yellow being the eastbound riders counted at the [classified] Kingsland count location, the blue being westbound.
On Monday to Wednesday, a lot more cyclists during the whole day were riding eastbound than westbound, with about 20-40% of the missing on the way back! And that on a commuting cycleway, where you would expect everyone going one way to also come back the other way!
Clearly, some conspiracy is at work here that AT is trying hard to hide. Maybe we finally have the reason here why there are so few commuter cyclists in Auckland? Something in the city centre must be abducting them. Maybe even forcing them to use cars to go back home after identifying them on the way in as subversive elements…
[At least, the stats results for the Fridays and Weekend periods seem to disprove the even worse possibility, namely that the counter isn’t working right. That would have really worried us. So what do YOU think makes those cyclists disappear? Where do they go?]
Also, nice stats for Census day. Makes me hope the “ride to work” count can rise a lot over the abysmal levels of the last Census.
UPDATE: Had a look at the detailed count for the Monday. It very clearly shows how the morning is making up almost all the dominance. It is in fact interesting to see how balanced the PM peak is. Though the mystery is far from clarified by that…
