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By admin, April 20, 2013

By Auckland Transport

The first three months of the year have seen a record number of Aucklanders take to their bikes during the morning peak.

Figures released by Auckland Transport show in March cycling during the peak period (7am to 9am) increased 24.1 per cent. This comes on top of an increase of 18.5 per cent in February and a rise of 9.0 per cent in January.

Matthew Rednall, Auckland Transport’s Manager Community Transport says “More and more Aucklanders are seeing cycling as a great option for getting to work. The fine weather has meant cycling records have been broken.”

In March 13,066 Aucklanders were on their bikes in the morning peak that’s the highest monthly number since counts started in November 2010.

[Editor's note: We understand that this refers to 13,066 cycle movements counted by the automatic cycle counters. Since the counters reflect only a small part of all Auckland's roads and paths, there were also many more that did not use a cycle counter route.]

Barbara Cuthbert from Cycle Action Auckland says, “This huge jump in cycling numbers confirms what we are seeing and hearing about across Auckland. More people, of all ages, are using bikes to connect with workplaces, local shops, ferries and trains, and for fitness and fun. It’s a vital step to bringing the liveable city into reality.”

There was a 16.3 per cent increase in all cycle movements in March compared to the same month last year. A total of 836,705 cycle trips were recorded in the year April 2012 to March 2013, an increase of 9.3 per cent on the previous year.

[Editors note: Shame that this was publicised too late to feature in Auckland Transport's monthly Board Meeting on Wednesday - from public transport experience, we know that good news needs to be publicised - for years and years - to change people's minds about "irrelevant" transport modes and get them to start considering them part of our transport network, not just a type of recreation. So let's use all chances to highlight cycling's rise!]

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By Max, April 18, 2013

Updated with new data at bottom

“Rainy weather can’t keep a good cyclist down” – I thought, trying hard to convince myself as I rode down Symonds Street last Tuesday, with drenching rain spraying into my face. Since I am not a cycle commuter at the moment (I live too close to work – its literally quicker to walk), I haven’t been cycling in the rain much recently. And its been a few years since this school-kid argued against his father’s modest request to at least, at minimum, stop cycling during icy conditions…

At least I felt quite happy at having found my good rain gear that morning. Even in that downpour, I was snug and dry, and able to arrive at my NZTA meeting with dry dress shirt and trousers, after having pulled off the zippered rain over-trousers.

But the more relevant point would be: How much does rainy weather influence the cycling numbers in Auckland? We know Copenhagen cycles through driving snow, but what about us Kiwis?

Well, first off, we – very roughly speaking – cycle about 25% less in winter than average over the year, and 25% more than average in summer. Those are the patterns when you look at the year-round automatic cycle counter results.

But what about day-to-day changes? And influence of weather directly, rather than seasonally? What happens when it is hosing down hard, like this Tuesday morning? So I went to have a look at the cycle counter data.

April 08 (Mon) Grafton Bridge 752 cycle movements

I used the handy-dandy Grafton Bridge counter to provide a comparison (I considered using Kingsland’s counter, but thought Grafton Bridge provides a better cross-section of cyclists).

I looked at 4 days:

• 

  April 09 (Tue) Grafton Bridge 907 cycle movements

  April 8 and 9 (Monday and Tuesday last week) – when we still had pretty good weather, and had had months of dry weather behind us

• April 15 and 16 (Monday and Tuesday this week) – while Monday was still tenable, Tuesday, as noted, was rather abysmal

April 15 (Mon) Grafton Bridge 574 cycle movements

So how do the results look like? Pretty telling (see results and curves at the right).

When looking at last week, we can see a real “bumper crop” of cyclists. 907 cyclists on Tuesday? Higher than any day on the bridge in the last December and January period. Monday was also a seriously strong day.

April 16 (Tue) Grafton Bridge 384 cycle movements

But then came the rains. Not only did the cyclist numbers drop off notably from last week’s Monday to this week’s Monday – presumably due to the start of worse weather over the weekend. They also took an even deeper nose-dive between Monday and our rainy Tuesday (and it wasn’t even raining all Tuesday morning – but by then, most commuters had obviously long since made their choice for more than 2 wheels). This week’s Tuesday had only 42% of last Tuesday!

So in the end, while this isn’t a very scientific study (way too few data points, lazy me), I feel confident to say that its seems to show that we just don’t like rain all that much!

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April 15 (Mon) Kingsland 460 cycle movements

UPDATE: One of our cocky commenters (well known to us) below threw down the gauntlet. Representing the Westies coming in along the Northwestern Cycleway, he’s telling the Grafton Bridge folks to “harden up” in the face of a wee bit of rain. Lots of cyclists out west – despite rain – he says!

April 16 (Tue) Kingsland 267 cycle movements

Well, we went back to the counter data, and this time had a look at the Kingsland counter – for the same Monday and Tuesday this week, with the rainy Tuesday. How many “Westies” (including inner-city Westies) gave up as the clouds opened up?

Well, it seems that on Grafton Bridge, between Monday and Tuesday, there was a 33% drop in cyclists. On the Northwestern Cycleway, in that same period, the drop was 42%…

Mmm, Tommo – seems like Westies are actually MORE affected by rain. But at least tall tales still work

Comments (23)

By admin, March 12, 2013

When reviewing the Auckland Transport cycle counter statistics (CAA’s access discussed here), a while ago we stumbled across a real oddity – lots of cyclists were using the Northwestern Cycleway to ride to town. But a lot less were coming back.

As you can see from the results of last week, this pattern still holds true – the yellow being the eastbound riders counted at the [classified] Kingsland count location, the blue being westbound.

On Monday to Wednesday, a lot more cyclists during the whole day were riding eastbound than westbound, with about 20-40% of the missing on the way back! And that on a commuting cycleway, where you would expect everyone going one way to also come back the other way!

Clearly, some conspiracy is at work here that AT is trying hard to hide. Maybe we finally have the reason here why there are so few commuter cyclists in Auckland? Something in the city centre must be abducting them. Maybe even forcing them to use cars to go back home after identifying them on the way in as subversive elements…

[At least, the stats results for the Fridays and Weekend periods seem to disprove the even worse possibility, namely that the counter isn't working right. That would have really worried us. So what do YOU think makes those cyclists disappear? Where do they go?]

Also, nice stats for Census day. Makes me hope the “ride to work” count can rise a lot over the abysmal levels of the last Census.

UPDATE: Had a look at the detailed count for the Monday. It very clearly shows how the morning is making up almost all the dominance. It is in fact interesting to see how balanced the PM peak is. Though the mystery is far from clarified by that…

Comments (13)

By admin, February 27, 2013

The reporting was on hiatus for two months, and then failed to appear in time for AT’s last board meeting, but we finally have the cycle count stats for December 2012 and January 2013 (see last page of linked document).

And as we had hoped, numbers keep increasing – plus 12.7% in December, and plus 3.8% in January. Not too bad at all.

There’s still a lot of month-by-month variation in the growth (probably mostly due to weather) – and the part of the count that is publicised still only covers 9 counters (which is fair enough, as including the 5 new counters that went live in November last year would skew the percentage growth picture, unless you have at least a full year of comparative numbers).

Out of interest, CAA reviewed the cycle counts for one of the newer counters, specifically Grafton Bridge. Here are some graphical stats for December and January:

• Late January had a bumper crop with [daily total flows] up to 500-700 cyclists on many days. Those are levels comparable to Northwestern Cycleway flows.
• Clearly Grafton Bridge is is a “working man/womans cycle route” – look how the numbers fall every weekend.
• Same for the period over Christmas and the holidays – down to less than half the usual.
• Eastbound versus westbound flows are pretty much identical at any time (quite unlike, for example, on Tamaki Drive during the morning). As many people ride to work to places east of the bridge, as west of it, which shows how important a link it is.

We also had a look at the distribution over the day, for one of the busier days, 21 January:

• Flows peaked just after work finishes for a lot of people in the CBD, with the [15 minute interval] after 17:15 being particularly busy – obviously, a lot of you can’t wait to get your legs moving after a day at the office.
• Again, we are clearly looking at working folks, as the “fever curve” really looks pretty much like that of the car-driving part of our society. Another example that cycling is transport, not (just) a leisure activity.

We hope that these kind of stats become a bit more accessible in the future, but in the meantime, its great to be able to discuss them with you here (thanks to Auckland Transport, CAA has been permitted access to the database and are allowed to share the information, so if you require data from any of the 15 counters, please contact us).

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By Max, December 19, 2012

This diagram looks like what a few ravers might create with glow sticks in a club, but it actually shows the usage patterns of 10 million bike trips taken on London’s bike hire system.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had something similar for Auckland? I guess if we had a public bike system (again) first… – but some other cities have done similar geospatial analysis with the help of people volunteering to use tracking apps on their smartphones while riding, so it could be done here too, even if we don’t have “Boris Bikes“.