“The steady growth in bicycle use presents an opportunity for the City to capitalize on the increased ridership by investing in safety and access improvements to attract a broader range of cyclists.”
–From PDOT bicycle count report.
Download PDF here.
The City of Portland Office of Transportation has just released their 21-page report detailing results of their 2007 bicycle counts (PDF here).
The report includes graphs and charts that reflect PDOT’s most comprehensive counting effort to date. This year, PDOT expanded its counts beyond the 60 locations done in 2006 to include a total of 98 sites.
As expected, their counts show a large increase in the amount of people riding bicycles in Portland.
Here are some of the highlights of their findings:
- Bicycle use in Portland showed a double‐digit increase for the third straight year.
- Bicycles represent 18% of all vehicles on the Hawthorne Bridge and 11% of vehicles on the four bicycle‐friendly Willamette River bridges.
- Bicycle traffic in Portland has more than doubled since 2001.
- Helmet use has risen steadily since the 1990’s, with 76% of recorded cyclists wearing helmets in 2007, up from 63% in 1997.
- Women represented 31% of all cyclists, up from 26% in 1997.
- While bicycle counts in March are approximately half those of the summer, they are still higher than the summer counts recorded in 2000.