With the manual cycle counts from March now out (2013 reports here), and showing an 11% increase to 2012, we were curious where the greatest increases (and the odd decrease) where.
Because a one-day count will always have the problem of fluctuating based on weather – but you can still clearly see localised trends by comparing whether individual sites have higher numbers (or grew at a different rate than the overall results). The weather in Henderson is unlikely to be massively different than in Howick!
Please note that for the map, we have used the AADT estimates for cyclist movements (AADT is traffic engineer speak for “number over the whole day, not just the peak hour“). We then also provided the change from last year’s volume.
We have also only used the Top 30 busiest count locations, which means that all these count locations already had at least ~200 cyclists during the day. Because of course a site that has 50 cyclists over the whole day can easily report an increase of a whopping 20% – yet that would only be 10 more cyclists. By going for the Top 30 sites with their higher base volumes, the growth or loss is a bit more relevant.
[PS: Originally, we scaled the icon sizes by cyclist count volumes, and coloured them according to growth or decline – so you could see more at a glance. Sadly, that worked only in Google Earth, not Google Maps – which lost that data in conversion.]
So what do you think? It’s pretty clear that cycling is mostly happening in the inner isthmus. Remember that these are not from just 9 automatic counters – these were from 85 sites scattered all over the region. Yet the good performers are all Central, with some West and North. There’s no East or South sites in the Top 30. Why do you think that is the case?
