Despite work on the Fremont Bridge that has at times restricted access to sidewalks in recent months, the city is still on track to reach one million bike trips across the bridge in 2014. But it will likely come down to the wire.
The bridge recorded its busiest month on record in July with 120,669 trips, beating out the record set just two months earlier. But more notably, September 2014 blew September 2013 out of the water, clocking 97,558 trips. That’s a 21 percent gain over the previous September, mirroring the gain seen in April and a bit higher than June’s notable 14 percent gain.
In all, bike trips over the bridge are up 9.4 percent compared to 2013, and 2014 has outpaced 2013 in all but two months (February and March). Riders just need to bike across the bridge 99,301 times in November and December in order to reach one million, a symbolic but pretty impressive goal for bike trips over a single bridge. If 2014 bike rates mirror those seen in 2013, we should reach one million right around Christmas.
So don’t stop biking! Well, you weren’t gonna do that anyway, were you?
Comments
9 responses to “Will we reach 1 million 2014 bike trips over the Fremont Bridge? It’s gonna be close”
I’ll be in the group of people queued up waiting to try to be the one millionth rider.
I’ll probably be in St. Louis by then, unfortunately. Unless you all seriously go wild on the biking thing, of course :-)
We’ll have to have a party of some kind in January if we make 1 million. Anyone have any ideas?
I’m sorry. I am one of the riders who crosses on the main bridge deck when the sidewalk is closed, or when you are required to walk the bike (at least when it’s not raining). The next time I have to wait for the bridge, I will try to remember to add a few crossings to make up for the ones that I missed.
I want to help host the party, Tom!!
Looking at the website http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/bikecounter_fremont.htm it would appear that in 2012, the sum of November and December is 102,823.. so if there is no growth in ridership, we’ll see the 1 million mark, if you get the same 9.1% year/year growth on top, you’ll have 112,180 riders and easily hit the mark.
What I find interesting about the winter ridership numbers is that those are commited bicyclists, either due to lack of funds, or joy of riding, or dedication to the sport and addicted to the exercise. So if we see Nov & Dec grow, we are clearly doing something right.
Don’t forget convenience. That is the top reason people choose bikes to get around in cities with great percentages of people biking.
Health is another reason, not just sporty pushing myself exercise, but everyday I’m getting 30 minutes of physical activity recommended by my doctor kind of exercise.
Cheers
[…] The Fremont Bridge is very likely to see more than 1 million bike trips by […]
I’ve been playing with this data in my spare moments to sharpen my Python skills. It turns out that we actually passed the million-riders-per-year mark back in late September if you look at a rolling 12 month total. Sounds like the party is actually overdue.
See here:
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/gist/anonymous/2321a72a5be24c9b551d
[…] as commenter Doug Ollerenshaw pointed out on our previous Fremont bike counter story, we did it back on September 29. That was the first day […]