A bike counter on the Fremont Bridge recorded an increase of 12 percent from 2014-15.
Last year marked the first year of complete bike counts for nine newly installed bike counters around Seattle. The City’s Bicycle Master Plan has a performance target of quadrupling ridership between 2014 and 2030. One way to measure our success is to count the number of people biking at various locations throughout Seattle and see if there is growth in ridership. The results from 2014 and 2015 are in the graphic below.
The increase in January was 28 percent, and for February the increase was an astonishing 41 percent. To put these numbers in perspective, the Fremont Bridge counter, the only one to operate for all of 2013, had an 8 percent increase from 2013 to 2014. The increase from 2014 to 2015 was 12 percent.
It appears that bike ridership in Seattle is on pace for another year of significant growth. Weather can obviously have an impact on how many people choose to hop on their bikes and may be contributing to these impressive increases in 2015. Seattleites enjoyed a number of dry and warmer days in both January and February.
Bike ridership in Seattle in 2014 and 2015.
Initial data for 2015 shows us that there is an increase in bicycle trips in Seattle and this growth is a positive sign we’ll likely see more in the future. To meet and grow demand, the City continues to add safer, more comfortable bike infrastructure like neighborhood greenways on residential streets and protected bike lanes on busy streets to build a connected citywide network.
Learn more about the bike data being collected, projects being planned for the next five years and performance targets and measurements at Seattle.gov/Transportation/BikeProgram.htm.
