Publicola reports that SDOT is seeking volunteers to help count the city’s bikers in the morning of Sept. 15 (6:30 – 9 a.m.).
Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board Chair Blake Trask says the downtown count is what the city uses to measure progress on its Bicycle Master Plan. “Annual counts will help SDOT better chart the growth of bicycle use and whether or not the city is moving toward its stated goal of tripling the rate of bicycling by 2016,” Trask says.
The increased bike counts will also help SDOT do outreach to the public. Because the agency doesn’t always have hard bike count numbers for roads they plan to redesign (most recently with the 125th St. road diet), it’s hard to quell suspicions that the city is catering to a few cyclists at the expense of everyone else.
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The city is increasing the regularity of bike counts from doing city-wide and downtown counts every other year to doing downtown counts every year and city-wide counts every other year. Want to help out? Contact SDOT Bicycle Program Planner Gina Coffman at 206.684.3902 or [email protected].
By the way, you know all that walking and biking in Seattle? It really is making us healthier:
In the big picture, the study results suggest that a big part of the gaps between American states and cities concerning health can be explained by differences in levels of walking and cycling, Pucher said.
