On Saturday, June 8th the bicycle counter on the Hawthorne Bridge set a new record with 9,834 recorded trips. The previous record, 8,305 trips, was set on Tuesday, September 25th of last year. That huge daily total on June 8th led to the week of June 3rd being the highest number of recorded trips for a week with 54,118. It’s very likely that June will be a record month for bike trips on the bridge with over 100,000 trips already recorded.
While June is typically one of the busiest months for bicycling in Portland, it’s worth noting that the June 8th trip total was inflated by the World Naked Bike Ride (which set a record of its own with over 8,150 participants).
The counter was installed on August 8th of last year and it logged its 1 millionth trip on April 1st 2013.
Since being installed, the bike counter has been a huge success. The $20,000 counter was donated to the City and it has performed as advertised. In addition to the marketing and encouragement boost the counter gives passersby, its counting prowess is also very valuable from a data collection standpoint. In fact, in the recommendations from their recent 83-page research report on bicycling, the City Club of Portland said the City should, “purchase and install additional automated bicycle counters to gather accurate bicycle ridership data.”
The bike counter on the Hawthorne Bridge has also found its way into local bike culture. Tomorrow (June 18th) is the Hawthorne Bridge Bike Barometer Pedalpalooza ride. Organizers of the ride are encouraging folks to do laps on the bridge to set a new record of 10,000 trips.
— Read more about Hawthorne Bridge Bike Counter in our story archives and check out daily, weekly, and monthly stats via the manufacturer’s website.