Bike Count Account

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all part of Tempe's first-ever bicycle count. This is a huge milestone for Tempe, folks. I know that Tucson has been counting bikes for three years, now, and I've heard reports from my dad about bike counts in Seattle, but I haven't heard of any other nonprofit organizations running bike counts anywhere else in the country. [That could be because I haven't looked for any, but I'll ignore that point for now.] Anyway. The first time a group does something like a bike count can be a big deal, just in terms of getting things up and running. Last fall, scrottie and I accompanied S down to Tucson to attend one of their bike count training sessions, to find out what these counts are all about. From there, S took the reins for getting the Tempe count underway, enlisting the help of a cadre of key organizers who have been making things move and shake on the behalf of the Tempe Bicycle Action Group.

My count happened at a particularly interesting and meaningful intersection, W University Drive and S Ash Avenue. This is the intersection where Chris Volpe was killed, in May of 2010, and where the bicycling community got together to install a ghost bike in honor of Chris. This is also the intersection where Gentle Strength used to be located - a sorely missed, local, new-age, grocery co-op. Furthermore, there are plans in the works to do streetscaping work along University, especially to facilitate pedestrian and bicyclist crossings at Farmer Ave (that's the end of my street) and Roosevelt Ave. So, it will be extremely useful for the City of Tempe to have data on what's going on at that intersection right now. Then, they can compare the current data to data after they've made changes to the area.

So, what was it like to sit at that intersection, next to Chris's ghost bike, for two hours on a Tuesday afternoon? Well, quite warm. Some unusual things happened. I believe I witnessed a man stealing copper wiring out of a transformer box, but he was across the street and things were so ambiguous that I didn't feel like I could do anything about the situation. Later on, someone at the skate shop started having some sort of health problem, so a police car, fire truck, and ambulance all pulled in to help the guy and cart him off on a gurney. There's a Circle K on the southeastern corner, so I also watched a whole bunch of people stopping in to buy stuff. In fact, a lot of potential traffic bypassed the intersection completely, cutting across parking lots or going into stores instead.

Oh, and I watched a whole lot of bicycles and pedestrians stream by, through the intersection. I've left my count sheet at home, but altogether I know I observed ~240 bicyclists in two hours. Or, rather, 240 bicyclist events. There were a number of repeats in my dataset, including a guy riding an orange tandem by himself, who rode in the correct direction with traffic on his way somewhere, and who proceeded to ride back in the same lane, against traffic, later on. The unicyclist wasn't a repeat, but he deserves mention, too. Somewhat surprisingly, there were more women than men at my intersection. Bicycling advocates are fond of saying that women are an "indicator species" for cycling safety. Male cyclists generally outnumber females, and the thinking is that women are more sensitive to whether or not the conditions seem safe. So there tend to be more female cyclists in areas that are safer. Does that mean my intersection is safe?

Well, some of the other numbers will belie this seemingly-positive outcome. There were many, many cyclists who were riding against traffic, on the sidewalk. Wearing headphones but not helmets. If you've talked to me for any period of time about helmets, you'll know that I'm not a "helmet-pounder" - that is, I don't equate helmet-wearing with being safety-conscious. But I do believe that the rate of helmet wearing could be indicative of peoples' general awareness of the risks they're taking when riding. We also weren't recording unsafe traffic maneuvers (too hard to teach people to spot them), so I can't give you data on the hair-raising things I observed.

I watched one driver almost hit two cyclists (though one cyclist was riding the wrong way), and I watched a whole lot of people who were walking and skateboarding around.

I think that many of my fellow watchers and I spent some of our count-time trying to think about other categories of data that would be interesting to collect. There wasn't a column for the skateboarders or razr-scooter operators, for instance, and there sure were a lot of them (I think they're responsible for more injuries on campus than the bicyclists). It would have been interesting to tally up those illegal traffic maneuvers. It also would have been interesting to note different types of bicycles - how many bmx bikes, versus how many trash-bikes (disposable $100 Wal-Mart bikes), versus how many cruisers (answer = lots).

The bicycling commuters really stood out from the students as well. They tended to wear helmets, and were also often dressed in spandex. They seemed to obey traffic laws more consistently.

I'm a little anxious about how the bike count team is going to manage all of the data that are being collected. I know that some of the folks working for the City of Tempe will put it to good use. But I also hope it can be made available to the public, because I know that my geeky friends and I are all itching to do some of our own amateur statistical analyses. And then we could start to compare ourselves to other cities with similar counts. In the long run, I'm hoping the team puts together a form that allows count volunteers to enter in their own data, simplifying the workload for the team. But hey, getting the whole thing started is the first step, and it's a huge one.