I don’t know about anyone else, but spring weather is on my mind right now. Â With that in mind, I checked out Sustain Indy’s Bikeways homepage to see if anything new was on the way. Â They have released their bicycle and pedestrian study from September of last year, the results of which can be seen below:
The first thing that jumps out is that the Monon Trail is still the king of bike and ped infrastructure in Indy. Â It is also interesting to see that the Peace Walk is getting relatively steady usage in a part of downtown that used to be mostly forgotten. Â These studies help to put some data toward our goal of giving Indy’s citizens safe options for being active in the city.
I’m sorry…the numbers on the bike lanes are absolutely laughable. I have ridden several times on the downtown Michigan bike lane heading toward Indiana Avenue. I also drive it as well. I have never seen a bicyclist using that bike lane. And supposedly 97 bicyclists went through the intersection of Michigan and West Street in two hours? Yeah right. The Monon numbers and Cultural Trial are believable because they’re safe and bicyclists use them all the time. It would be helpful what two hours are being used, but frankly that volume of bike traffic during any two hours is a joke.
The form says the counts were 5-7pm on weekdays, noon-2pm on weekends. On a nice day, I could imagine that many people biking toward IUPUI after normal work hours to avoid parking hassles.
On 9/11/13, it was in the 90s and fairly humid at 5pm per Wunderground.com.
I go to IUPUI and can’t remember the last time I was on campus, when there wasn’t snow on the ground, and didn’t see a biker on the Michigan Street bike lane.
Correction. They do say when the counts were conducted on the website. It’s just in small print at the bottom. *Weekday counts were conducted from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and weekend counts were conducted from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.”
The 5-7 slot is the time I normally went home picking up part of the Michigan Road bike lane. Still have never seen anyone use that bike lane.
It’s highly plausible that bike traffic would pick up around rush hour in that area. Perhaps they were behind you?
Paul, does having a personal agenda against all bike lanes make you blind to cyclists on the road? It’s drivers like you that force cyclists to wear dayglo vests to feel safe. “I didn’t see you” is not an appropriate defense for hitting a cyclist.
If you read the image, you’ll see it’s dated from 2012.
Yep. I participated in this year’s fall bike count and my location (Illinois and Cultural Trail) isn’t listed. This is the count from last year. Oops!
I’ll tell you that ridership on Illinois was garbage this year because of the bridge being out of comission a few miles up the road. The cultural trail had good numbers, bike and ped.
Interestingly, I saw that a majority of cyclists on the cultural trail were female, while I did not see a single rider on the Illinois bike lane who wasn’t a young male. Kindof drives home Paul’s point that while bike lanes can be an asset when done right, they are far from being THE answer. We need to be advocating for safe infrastructure…the kind that the young and the elderly feel confident riding on.
Matt…Illinois at Walnut is Illinois at Cultural Trail
Thanks. Regardless, the fall count was done on Oct 9th this year. The data collected was also different from what is displayed here (males and females were counted seperately).
I ride the Michigan Street BL about once a week to head to the west side……. (+1). This intersection is obviously one of the ,aim intersections for IUPUI traffic and students traveling from campus to apartments downtown. It is very likely that this many students alone pass this intersection.
I’m curious now about the male/female ratio on the Shelby Bike Track, as that’s a hybrid between a completely separated facility (a la Monon) and a painted bike lane (a la Illinois).
On a lighter note: How does the count allow for the people riding the wrong way on the “one way” New York and Michigan bike lanes? 🙂
Ha! I think they are calculated as a (-0.5). Sure, they are using the facility, and human, but going the opposite direction.
Wrong-way riders are counted. 🙂 “Bend Screenline Method” was used this year, which involves drawing an imaginary line at some point perpendicular to the road. Where the surveyor chooses to place it doesn’t matter, but they have then count every bike / pedestrian that crosses it, no matter what direction they’re going.