August 12, 2020

12,700 – Jeff Leigh explores the Beach Bikeway datapoint

Jeff Leigh from HUB, responding to the preceding post – Beach Bikeway Gets a Datapoint: 12,700

 

Jeff: 

Some comparisons from CoV data: Highest single-day bike counts on popular City of Vancouver cycling routes, over the past few years:

Burrard Bridge:                            8,676
Point Grey Rd at Stephens:         5,852
Seawall at David Lam Park:        7,785
Seawall at Science World:           9,428

12,700 on the Beach Avenue Bikeway signifies overwhelming success at encouraging people to cycle.  And recall that this is simply with plastic pylons, temporary signs, no pavement improvements, and so on.  Imagine what we could do with a permanent protected bikeway with better signage and markings, connected at both ends.

The Burrard Bridge bike lanes were regarded as the busiest in the City based on the counter data.  This blows that number out of the water.

And it wasn’t a one time occurrence.

Looking at the recent data along Beach, there were single weekend days in June with over 10,000.   There was a Thursday in June with 9,415.  A Monday with 9,294.  There were seven days in July with over 10,000 bike counts.

At the HUB Cycling tent last weekend there were 9,993 bikes that passed by – per the counter a few metres away (the hose didn’t get cut until the following day).

It is hard to imagine this number of people cycling on the current seawall path, especially past the restaurant under the Burrard Bridge, or in front of the restaurant at the foot of Denman, both of which are congested.

When the seawall is opened up to people on bikes again, the two routes will naturally balance each other, with slower and more leisurely riders on the water, and most using the Beach Avenue Bikeway.

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  1. This is great news but I think it might be even better for overall numbers. I’ve always suspected the counts to be significantly lower than actual volumes – especially the higher they get. The more cyclists there are, the more likely that two get counted as one. Perhaps the pneumatic ones are more accurate, an offset of a few cms will probably count both, but the embedded electronic ones are terrible: two cyclists who are somewhat near each other routinely get counted as one.

    I know that manual counts are occasionally used to calibrate and adjust, but I’ve seen 9,000+ on the Science World counter before any adjustments and I’m sure that’s way low based on how many are missed. Furthermore, many bypass this counter altogether because deeking through the parking lot is a better connection to the Quebec Street bike lanes, and some just ride Quebec anyway.

    And why is the Science World counter broken more often than it is functional?

    1. The Science World counter is an outlier. I understand that it was installed by Science World, not the City. The City has access to the data, but I am not clear on who does the maintenance, or who is responsible for upgrading it to a current design.

  2. It is harder to get comparable vehicle counts. CoV data online is quite a few years old, and wasn’t sampled daily (the counters were set up a couple of times per year).

    At 1100 Beach, closer to the Aquatic Centre:

    8400 and 8600, two different days, those numbers being a total of both directions over a 24 hour period each day

    At 1400 Beach, same block as the bike counter, measured west of Jervis (so the combined volume of Pacific and Beach east of Jervis)

    10,700 Eastbound; 10,000 Westbound, over a 24 hour period (one day)

  3. The really big positive , for me, is that the cycle path could be connected through to the north end of Burrard Bridge. Is this in the cards with HUB et al?

    1. The original recommendation that HUB Cycling made to the CoV for slow streets/temporary lanes included Beach as the top priority (out of 15 or so suggested), and it was recommended to come up Pacific to Burrard. The City implemented a temporary bikeway along Beach, but came along the low road to Hornby. That is fine for now, but we want to see a seamless connection to the unidirectional lanes on Pacific at Thurlow, to access the bridge.

      So yes.

  4. $75,000 for traffic cones in Stanley Park?! $10,000 a month for each electronic sign?! Abolish the Parks Board and their spendthrift commissioners! And no doubt they’ll have their hands in the taxpayers’ pocket to make up for lost parking revenue!

    1. You need to look into the cost of infrastructure for vehicles,

      I recall that when the Hornby bike lane was put in, the price tag was $3.2 million. People ranted about it. At the same time, left turn lanes were being installed on Knight St. At 33rd, it was 3.4 million. At 41st, it was 3.2 million. At 49th, it was 3 million. At 57th, it was 6.2 million. Four intersections cost 15.8 million just for left turn bays. Cycling infrastructure is very inexpensive.

      The rental bill for the pylons was paid 50% by the province. It was well worth it to allow vehicles back in. Recall that the bikes didn’t need the pylons, it was just for the vehicles, to keep them from running into people on bikes.

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