Iron Horse Trail handling at least 1,200 "cars" a day

In an earlier post, I wrote about bicycle counters and the impact that data can have on setting transportation infrastructure priorities.

MIke Boos asked whether anyone has done user counts on the Iron Horse Trail, and it appears that some "low-tech" counting was done for a 90-minute period during the daily morning commute for this year's Commuter Challenge.

Here are the numbers for #BCounted:

Monday: 49 pedestrians and 108 cyclists.

Tuesday: 58 pedestrians and 152 cyclists.

Wednesday: 58 pedestrians and 138 cyclists.

Thursday: 53 pedestrians and 107 cyclists.

Friday: 47 pedestrians and 121 cyclists.

That's a total of 263 walkers and 626 riders. Assume that the same morning riders were coming home on the same route, and that's 1,200 commuter trips daily. That would be 62,000 trips a year, or put in another way, 62,000 single-passenger vehicles that are not using regional roads.

Something to think about.

Comments

[Mike]

Thanks for looking this up... But isn't that more like 250 commuter cycling trips daily? The 1200 total would be for the week. Also, those measurements were on the head of the Laurel Trail at Erb and Caroline. Still, good numbers to have.

[Bill]

@mike Oops. Never trust journalists with arithmetic. That would be 1,200 a week, but still 62,000 a year.

[Mike Boos]

All good :) I recently made a similar blunder myself trying to calculate risk levels between cyclists and motorists.

I still want to see numbers for the Iron Horse Trail - my guess is that you've got more walking and cycling per square foot on the trail than driving by car on the surrounding streets near Caroline & Allen. Would love to have the numbers to prove that.

[Biker]

Live to ride......

3pm today Vic park and downtown becomes a haze of exhaust from "vintage cars" with no emission standards.....should make for an even more polluted environment on a smog day....

People have to soon realize we cannot drive everywhere much less shows like this in a concentrated city area?

Maybe when the air is too polluted to breath we wil wise up....too late then tho