I just received the bicycle citation numbers from the Portland Police Bureau Traffic Division (the Traffic Division writes 80% of all tickets in the Portland metro area). I took the numbers and made a few charts.
Some things to consider when looking at these numbers:
- The number of moving motor vehicle citations do not include photo radar tickets, which average about 3300 per month.
- Lt. Mark Kruger says many of the bicycle citations in the early part of the year were given out for riding without lights, because they had just started their bike light program.
- The big spike in May includes 50 tickets written on a single morning in Southeast Portland (now infamous) stop-sign enforcement mission.
Here’s the chart showing just bicycle citations:
And this one shows the number of moving violations compared to bicycle citations:
I realize there’s is much more to the equation than simple numbers and statistics, but I think it’s good to have this information out in the open.
My contact at the Traffic Division will send me their citation stats every month from here on out.