Friday, May 20 was National Bike to Work Day. The idea is to get more people to ride to work. Cities set up pit stops with food and free t-shirts, local politicians ride their bikes and experienced riders lead commuter convoys to help newer bike commuters get used to certain routes.
I certainly noticed a difference on my commuter because there were a lot more bikers. The data from bike counters bares this out. In Alexandria, there were 86% more bikers compared to the day before, some 9,159 rolled past BikeArlington counters compared to 4,928 the day before. For one day, bike commuters made up roughly 4.8% of Alexandria’s total commuter population, on par with some of the highest bike percentages in large cities such as Portland or Washington, DC. Now some bikes were double counted but not all bikes were counted either so take that percentage with a grain of salt.
Alexandria bike to work day data
| |||
Counter location
|
Bike to work day
|
May 19 weekday
|
% increase
|
Mount Vernon Trail #1
|
2597
|
1276
|
104%
|
Mount Vernon Trail #2
|
2735
|
1368
|
100%
|
Mount Vernon Trail #3
|
1570
|
898
|
75%
|
Four Mile Trail
|
767
|
482
|
59%
|
Commonwealth Ave
|
487
|
259
|
88%
|
Potomac Yard #1
|
445
|
308
|
44%
|
Eisenhower Trail
|
432
|
202
|
114%
|
Holmes Run Trail
|
126
|
135
|
-7%
|
Total bikers counted
|
9,159
|
4,928
|
86%
|
Percentage of 95,227 daily commuters
|
4.8%
|
2.6%
| |
Across 16 other busiest counters in DC and Arlington, there were 64% more commuters than the day before.
Arlington and DC bike to work day data
| |||
Counter location
|
Bike to work day
|
May 19 weekday
|
% increase
|
14th Street Bridge
|
3757
|
2328
|
61%
|
Roosevelt Bridge
|
834
|
547
|
52%
|
TR Island Bike
|
2524
|
1472
|
71%
|
Rosslyn Bikeometer
|
2617
|
1618
|
62%
|
Key Bridge East
|
1865
|
1262
|
48%
|
Key Bridge West
|
1147
|
842
|
36%
|
Custis Rosslyn
|
3059
|
1858
|
65%
|
W&OD East Falls Church
|
2571
|
1232
|
109%
|
W&OD Bon Air West
|
3282
|
1662
|
97%
|
Custis Bon Air Park
|
2282
|
1232
|
85%
|
W&OD Bon Air Park
|
1644
|
975
|
69%
|
W&OD Columbia Pike
|
1521
|
798
|
91%
|
CC Connector
|
1559
|
903
|
73%
|
15th Street NW (DC)
|
2398
|
2222
|
8%
|
Metropolitan Branch Trail (DC)
|
1313
|
805
|
63%
|
I St SW (DC)
|
494
|
254
|
94%
|
Total
|
32,867
|
20,010
|
64%
|
As you can see, 14th St Bridge was the busiest as it usually is. But one intriguing trend is how much higher parts of the W&OD trail doubled while some of the bridges closer to DC only increased by half to two-thirds. The 15th St Cycletrack, the longest in the region, only increase 8% compared to the day before and almost seems like a fluke. There has been some construction closures on it which dampens ridership. But it may be that it has attracted all of the bikes in its neighborhood for now and won’t attract more until additional cycletracks connect to it. For example, Key Bridge has two trail connections in Arlington but in DC, dumps bikes onto busy M St or the narrow C&O canal trail. Roosevelt Bridge does the same thing. It may be that ridership will stagnate with decent infrastructure on both sides because it has attracted most of the relatively experienced cyclists but hasn’t dipped into the deep pool of “interested but concerned riders” who only feel comfortable with some basic bike infrastructure. This is something for bike planners to study further.
