Trends for the City Centre follows the region

© Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar / CC-BY-SA-3.0Like all other Auckland cycle counts – be they the once-yearly regional survey, or the continous counters of various cycle routes, cycling into the City Centre is showing a very heartening trend.

The rock bottom has been reached and overcome years ago – now we need to make sure the gains keep on happening.

Like the regional cycle count, the “Screenline” surveys for the city centre (Page 92-93) are one-off surveys, and so, as individual counts, are not so significant for a mode which is somewhat fluctuating and weather-dependent like cycling. However, the screenline counts have been going on for a long while now, and thus we get more and more data points – showing that in the last 5 years, we have a clear rise of cyclists entering the CBD in the morning. In 2008, it was 676 cyclists entering the CBD between 7am and 9am. In 2012, this rose to 1,058 – a 57% gain.

Some interesting factoids are that Symonds Street and Quay Street had the highest cycle flows (326 and 243 during the 2h-period). Interestingly, Upper Queen Street dropped massively from 2011 to 2012 – whether that is one of the fluctuations due to the once-off nature of the count, or a more permanent change in how people on bikes enter the CBD, we don’t know (yet). I’d expect it was likely just a fluke result or error…?

Oh, and there is now also a count showing the number of ferry passengers arriving with bicycles brought along (Page 91-92). A total of 167 passengers brought their bikes along, roughly half a percent of all ferry passengers. Not too much yet, but then the bike racks in places like Devonport are pretty full, so this is just a part of the combined cycle-ferry trips.

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