Comments

1
Would expect this count to be far, far more reliable than PBOTs.
2
But can it tell how many TALL bikes have crossed the bridge?
3
Nifty, this is exactly like the counter they installed on YO MAMA.
4
Bikes!
5
Just wait till some stoopid anus tags it so you can't read the damn thing - like every other bus stop.
6
I don't see a counter for "% that were assholes to pedestrians" on there anywhere though...not that anyone cares about non-bike riders.
7
BIKE RIDERS ARE NON BIKE RIDERS SOMETIMES, TOO. CAN WE GET A CLICHE-GRIPE COUNTER ON BLOGTOWN?
8
@Chuck, what evidence do you have that there are reliability issues with PBOT counts. This will be nice since it will give an exact count of all bikes at all times for the whole year across the bridge it is clearly not going to be affordable to install enough of these counters to come anywhere near the geographic coverage that the PBOT survey represents.
9
No evidence, just a long-held belief vetted through years of experience that counts conducted by humans, regardless of what is being counted, are easily skewed in order to support or refute a particular goal/philosophy. I wouldn't trust a dietitian employed by McDonalds to give me an accurate calorie count of a Big Mac anymore than I'd trust PBOT to accurately count the number of bikes crossing a bridge in the city.
10
@Chuck I encourage you to look more fully into the methodology used for the City of Portland bicycle counts. The city already uses automated counters to make some of the high traffic area counts, and considering the number of people involved in the counting you are proposing an awfully wide ranging conspiracy. I also don't see how you would explain away the increase in count numbers as being "skewed to support or refute a particular goal" since the methodology has remained the same year after year, meaning that each year the hundreds of people involved in counting would have to fake their numbers by a steadily increasing amount to show the observed trend. I find it a lot easier to conclude that the count is fairly accurate than to believe that such a large number of people have managed to secretly collude with one another to fake the results.
11
Do you know where one would access that information? I'd love to look it over.

Look, I don't think it's some kind of vast conspiracy or anything. It's just when there's an espoused goal (in this case, getting people on bikes through dedicating infrastructure to that goal) I tend to be a bit more skeptical of data.
12
last years report can be found here and includes information about methodology: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportati…

I agree with you that there is the possibility that some volunteers might inflate counts due to some misguided desire to shift the results, but there are so many people involved in the counting and the trend has continued over a long enough period that I don't believe the results are significantly impacted by people lying about the counts and to my knowledge there has been no evidence of any falsified counts.
13
Thanks or the link, really. Much appreciated.

Unfortunately, the count being conducted in majority by volunteers, who have to love biking so much that they're willing to give up their free time to count other people biking, only increases my doubt in those counts.

And they only do counts during the summer months? You only do that if you have a specific goal in mind. That's enough right there to write the count off, IMO.

I'm know there's been an increase in cycling in the past two decades. How could there not be? But having lived in this city long enough to know the way it's run, I'm will remain very skeptical of counts from PBOT, especially while Tom Miller is in charge of the shop.
14
Nice ad buy by CycleOregon: $20K for a perpetual presence on one of the busiest bike routes in the state.
15
this path should be the first leg of the Midnight Mystery Ride this Friday, that way they can see how many people are in the group...
16
http://portland-hawthorne-bridge.visio-too…

Yeah, the actual numbers are consistently lower than the City of Portland's bike count and claim of 8,000 daily Hawthorne trips.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.