Friday, March 20, 2015

Where's the bicycle count report? 3

Mayor Lee
Lex sends this:

You can draw the logical conclusion from the missing count---cycling numbers are flat or declining.

The same stunt was pulled in New York City. Every year the Department of Transportation released the cycling numbers with great fanfare at a press conference. Then the rate of increase declined for 3 straight years. Then in 2013 they released the report 5 months late.

You're going to love this. They didn't call a press conference. Instead they just posted the numbers on their website and didn't notify anyone in the media.

It turns out that ridership had actually declined. Since then NYC hasn't released any cycling numbers for 2 years.

You can bet that if ridership had rebounded they'd be calling press conferences left and right.

Here's the NY Times story on the "stealth" release of the last cycling report. It makes for fun reading.

Rob's comment:
Yes, it's suspicious that San Francisco's bicycle count report, usually released in December, is now three months overdue. Maybe the MTA thought no one would ask about it, and they were almost right, since apparently no one in the rest of the city's media did ask about it. 

The city's media pounced uncritically on last year's report, which is what they usually do.

Could the bike revolution in San Francisco be stalled like it has in Portland and Vancouver? What if they build it on Polk Street and Masonic Avenue and no cyclists---or even very few---come? Naturally, the city will restore those streets to their previous configuration, right?

Click on "Bicycle Count Report" below for earlier posts on counting cyclists in San Francisco.

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We're number two!

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But we need to do better!

Thanks to Patheos.

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