Thanks Sara!
2010-11-12 17:32:51
5
Bike Documentation project - summary data
I hope this formats in a way that is legible for this board. If not, my apologies to all, and I'll see if Scott or Erok can work their magic and post it in a pdf format.
Counting cyclists is surprisingly tricky, so some of the data you see here might not correspond directly to what might have been posted to the board as "working data" for a variety of reasons. In most cases you'll see a varistion of only one or two cyclists.
We've included overall OBSERVED gender and helmet utilization data as well. It can be hard to positively identify the gender of a cyclist when they fly through an intersection, especially if you are trying to monitor several other things at the same time. So, take this data with a small grain of salt. The ratios are solid, but we sometimes miss a little of this "extra" information.
Overall, this round of counts demonstrates that in our major commuting corridors, cyclists are overwhelmingly male, and that there are way too many people (in my mind) choosing to ride without a helmet.
Location Total % Male Helmet Use
Ellsworth at Aiken (pm) 71 75% 86%
Forbes at Murray (am) 107 83% 68%
IKEA 0 N/A N/A
Ellsworth at Aiken (am) 156 70% 66%
7th Street Bridge(pm) 64 77% 52%
6th Street Bridge(pm) 65 86% 35%
21st and Smallman (pm) 65 63% 82%
21st and Railroad (pm) 24 75% 54%
21st and Penn (pm) 26 81% 54%
21st and Penn (am) 70 69% 81%
21st and Smallman (am) 14 86% 43%
21st and Railroad (am) 18 83% 55%
Washington Blvd@ARB (am)9 78% 100%
Brighton at North (am) 15 67% 100%
Wilkins at Fifth 62 81% 48%
Murray at Forbes (pm) 58 79% 72%
McKees Rocks Plaza (am) 2 100% 50%
Doughboy Square (am) 51 N/A N/A
2010-11-12 17:08:12
See if this HTML code works any better:
Nope. It doesn't take the TABLE tag.
2010-11-12 17:48:08
Throwing this into Excel suggests some trend lines -- as the fraction of male riders goes up, the fraction of helmet wearers tends to go down.
By contrast, the likelihood of wearing a helmet is pretty much constant with the number of riders; as ridership increases, the likelihood of wearing a helmet stays the same.
Finally, there is a slight downward trend on the fraction of male riders as the number of total riders increases. The more riders you get, the larger fraction of women riders you see.
Insert the usual blah-blah about correlation and causation, and sample sizes and so on.
2010-11-16 17:22:04
@James -- we actually have specific helmet utilization rates by gender in some locations.
I think it was Scott that made an interesting observation recently about perception of public spaces, and something to the effect that the mroe women there are in a public space, the "better" the space is perceived. (Meaning women are the barometer of public acceptance, not that the presence of women brings men, who up the total activity levels.)
I think the same can be said for cycling. The more cyclists there are in a given location or area, the higher the percentage of women in that overall group. At least that's what we seem to be seeing, anecdotally.....
P.S. data is available in Excel format. Just doesn't tranfer well to bulletin board.....
2010-11-16 17:52:11