Each year the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) facilitates a one-day count of bike commuter traffic at key points throughout the city. SDOT is scheduled to release its findings tomorrow. But in advance of that, the PI.com speculates that the Mayor Mike McShwinn might lose his moniker:

A city-sponsored count of bicyclists on Seattle streets last year showed bike traffic fell during Mayor Mike McGinn’s second year in office.

The one-day 2010 annual bike count showed mixed results, with bike use increasing Downtown but falling 15 percent everywhere else in the city.

Outside of Downtown, there were 3,981 cyclists counted in 2010, compared to 4,666 in 2008, according to the results. Most of the drop was along the Burke-Gilman Trail in Ballard and Fremont, and at the Fremont Bridge, according to the data.

For all the Pedal-Powered Freedom Fighters™ fighting for turf on Seattle’s streets—the people who made Seattle the second most bike-commute-friendly city in the country in 2010—this would be mildly depressing were it true. But let’s look at the big picture here, shall we?

Biking is a fair-weather activity for many people—even dedicated commuters—and so a one-day count is inherently flawed. “Look outside at the weather right now,” orders John Mauro, a spokesman for the Cascade Bicycle Club, which helps facilitate both the city- and a state-wide bike commuter count. “People wake up in the morning and ask, ‘Is today a good day to bike?‘ And if it’s raining, the answer for a lot of people may be, ‘no.'”

In addition, popular cycling commuter routes have evolved (and dispersed) as the city has increased its marked paths, making an annual count at the same key intersections less representative of total commuters (which might account for the fact that downtown commuting increased while falling elsewhere in the city).

SDOT is rumored to be expanding its annual count to a quarterly count to address these flaws—it seems pretty clear we need more data on how, why, and when people commute in this city—but the department hasn’t yet returned calls for comment.

But even if commuting has fallen in some Seattle neighborhoods, as this data shows, “it just means we need to create a network more than ever so people can use our system,” says Mauro. “We know that 71 percent of Americans say they want to ride more than they do, but think that maybe it’s unsafe. We need to increase the quality of our facilities to serve, and facilitate, this increase in ridership.”

Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row...

19 replies on “Gasp: Is Bike Commuting Falling Under the Watch of Our Bike Humping Mayor?”

  2. I haven’t biked to work this year, unlike last year or the year before, BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO BE FUCKING KILLED BY ASSHOLE DRIVERS!!! So…it’s Metro for me

  4. A one-day sample? Seriously?

    You can’t draw any conclusions about bike traffic from a one day sample. If SDOT only has the budget to study one day a year, they shouldn’t even bother.

  11. It’s blasphemy to even question that bicycling is growing and real soon now will be the one true mode, the only mode. To count at all implies a disturbing lack of faith.

    A disturbing lack of faith indeed.

  12. “And if it’s raining, the answer for a lot of people may be, ‘no.'”

    This. It’s exactly why bike commuting is never going to amount to anything but a fringe activity in a city where it’s rainy (to varying extents) the majority of the year.

    Let’s put our money into public transit, which does have a chance of serious growth.

  14. I have long said that an annual single-day count is almost completely useless data.

    I confess I’m a total fair-weather biker. My bike never leaves my basement in winter. If there is any chance that I’ll get rained on, I’ll drive rather than bike. September is a perfect example of a month where I might bike or drive, dependent entirely on the rain forecast.

    I’d suggest that if you did that count every day for a month, and cross tabulate that with the weather, you’d get a pretty accurate count of how much bike commuting is weather-dependent. That might actually be usable data.

  15. Maybe more people that don’t have jobs are not walking, biking, driving, to the jobs that they don’t have anymore.

    Remember the economy, it sucks.

  17. Wait, wait, wait…

    When car communing was shown to have dropped after 2008 (and the staff of the Stranger was half-blinded with anti-tunnel fervor) that drop was proof incontrovertible that commuting by car was done, over; a thing of the past soon to disappear from the landscape like so many wooly mammoths at the end of an ice age.

    And yet, when a similar drop is noticed in bicycle commuting as well… that one’s the weather? Really?!?

    I’m sorry, but the degree of mental mumbo-pucus on display here strains the very limits of credulity.

    Look, why don’t we just be honest with ourselves and face facts: since 2008 the economy has gone in the shitter, there are less people working and many of those that still do work fewer days and/or hours, and so there are fewer people commuting overall, both with cars and bikes.

    See? Wasn’t that simple? No need to try yourself up in knots trying to rationalize one set of numbers while holding on with bare knuckles to an inverse rationalization for another–strikingly similar–set of other numbers. (car rate drop vs bikes rate drop)

    Nope, you can throw all that out. Instead, just one basic, obvious explanation that applies to all the data uniformly–and cuts through them all simply and straightforwardly.

    Occam would be so proud!

  19. @21: According to Weather Underground, Boeing Field had .21″ of rain that day. I probably rode that day, but likely wasn’t counted because the count ended at 9:00am, which is when I leave my house.

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