Cycle counters show surge in bike rides in 2017

Cycling continued to grow in 2017. There were 3.67 million bike trips counted across Auckland by 28 regional and city centre counters, which have been in place for at least two years.

This is a 6.2 per cent increase on 2016, when 3.45 million trips were recorded.

On average, this is 10,055 bike trips per day and means almost 7200 trips that could have been taken by car were instead taken by bike.

Vehicle trip figures are based on average car occupancy of 1.4 people per vehicle.

If all these cars were lined up from end to end, they would stretch for 32km.

AT’s Walking, Cycling and Road Safety Manager Kathryn King says the extra 220,000 trips can be attributed to new cycling infrastructure, better cycling network connections, and more people discovering how easy and enjoyable trips by bike can be.

“If you look around at key infrastructure during peak travel times, you’re seeing more and more people choosing to travel by bike,” she says.

“It’s not just people riding for exercise. There are more parents riding with their children in bike seats on their way to school, people commuting by ebike in their work clothes and more women and older people on cycleways.”

November 2017 was the year’s busiest month for the cycling network, with 355,088 trips recorded.
“This is quite unusual as we find the busiest month of the year is usually March, but this year it came in second place with 345,156 trips,” says Miss King.

Tuesday 21 November was the busiest day for the network with 17,529 trips recorded. Tuesdays took out the top nine busiest days for the counters.

The new Waterview Shared Path is busiest on weekends, with the weekend days averaging 368 trips. Its busiest day in its first three months of opening was Sunday 5 November with 809 trips.

“We’re really pleased with the year-on-year growth we’re seeing across Auckland and we expect to see the growth continue over 2018 as we continue delivery of a safe cycling network,” says Miss King.

Auckland Councillor and regular bike rider Chris Darby says the gains are showing the normalisation of cycling in Auckland.

“More and more people are riding bikes around the region. In 2016, 46,000 people, the equivalent of a full Mt Smart Stadium, took up cycling,” he says.

“It’s important that we connect up our cycling network to make these trips safer and easier, so that even more people can join the bike revolution.”

In 2017, AT’s Active Modes research showed that 35 per cent of Aucklanders cycled, up from 31 per cent in 2016.

41 per cent of these riders are cycling for key point-to-point journeys, such as to the shops, work, places of study and to get to public transport.

Over half of Aucklanders (53 per cent) believe that a lot is being done to improve cycling in Auckland, and 71 per cent do not think there are enough cycle lanes and cycle paths.

Auckland Transport is continuing to deliver safe cycling infrastructure in 2018.

Notes to editors:
Auckland Transport’s cycling monitoring is published each month.
We report on two sets of cycle counters: a set of 14 counters around the region and a set of 13 counters around the city centre.
For December 2017, at 14 regional count sites:
• 1.818 million cycle trips were recorded for the year of January to December 2017, an increase of 7.9% on the previous 12 months.
• 168,452 cycle trips were recorded in December 2017, an increase of 14.9% when compared to December 2016.
At 13 city centre count sites:
• 1.827 million cycle trips were recorded for the year of January to December 2017, an increase of 3.7% on the previous 12 months.
• 166,919 cycle trips were recorded in December 2017, an increase of 14.5% when compared to December 2016.
Our vehicle trip figures are based on average car occupancy of 1.4 people per vehicle.

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