City seeks volunteers for expanded rider count effort

How many bikers do you see?
(Photo © J. Maus)

The City of Portland is expanding the scope of their annual bike counts and they need volunteers to help them do it.

Denver Igarta, a transportation planner with PDOT, says they want to cover 140 locations this year. That’s an increase over the 98 locations they counted in 2007, which was up from the 60 locations they counted in 2006.

“We’re trying to be aggressive about getting data and we want to gather counts from all segments of the city. Last year we counted 98 locations and now we want to disperse those locations even further out.”

One part of the city that will see more locations counted is Southwest Portland. Igarta said PDOT is working with local advocacy group SWTrails on recommendations for an expansive bicycle boulevard network they hope to include in the upcoming revision of the city’s Bicycle Master Plan.

By getting counts before the bicycle boulevards are built, PDOT will be able to show the impact of new bikeways on ridership numbers.

In addition to illustrating how bikeways influence ridership, there are other things PDOT hopes to do with the counts.

Primarily, the numbers will be used to get a sense of the existing conditions in terms of ridership across the city. Igarta also hopes they find out where people are riding as well as data on gender and helmet use.

Last year was the first year PDOT implemented an expanded bicycle count effort. Now that they have baseline data, Igarta says this second year of counts will allow them to start showing trends.

The counts will be done during peak bike commute hours during weekdays this July, August and September.

For a full report and results of PDOT’s 2007 bike counts, read PDOT releases latest bike count report published on 9/27/07.

If you’d like to volunteer, email Denver Igarta at denver.igarta [at] pdxtrans [dot] org.