Monday 17 January 2011

Utrecht bicycle counts


A new video from Mark Wagenbuur shows the average number of cyclists per day on some of the busier cycle routes in Utrecht.

Mark says: The number of cyclists is counted regularly in Utrecht (Netherlands). The city council monitors the bicycle volume to see if cycling policies and infrastructure are still adequate.

Because of the huge numbers of cyclists the counting is done automatically. Devices are put up temporarily on a huge number of counting points each year. Some of these are shown in this video.

The video then shows some of the streets that see more than 10,000 cyclists passing on every working day in this Dutch city with a population of 300,000.

The figures are from the website of the city of Utrecht. Cyclists are counted in almost every city and town in the Netherlands in a similar way.


This map, from a previous post shows the cycle counts across Utrecht:


At that time, the following points in the city had more than 10000 cyclists per day:

Smakkelaarsveld 22200
Nachtegaalstraat 15270
Lange Jansstraat 14850
Amsterdamsestraatweg 13970
Weg tot de Wetenschap 12130
Twijnstraat 10540
Voorstraat 10220
Prins Hendriklaan 10200

Like everywhere else that counts cyclists, these counters are subject to some margin of error. For example, cyclists who cross at the same time may not all be counted. The diagonal placing of the tubes is an attempt to make them work better with people cycling side by side.

There are many more posts about Utrecht.

2 comments:

Oldboy in Brussels said...

This is very interesting and really show that cycle traffic is really matters for the authorities.
Similarly in Gent, Belgium, the authorities have developped a strategical transport model for the greater city that is multi modal, i.e. including Walking, cycling, Public transport and private transport. (Most large cities in Flanders have a multimodal models with cyclists)
Amazing I find it!

In the UK or even in London, proposing to include cyclists in strategical transport model will make you appear insane to TfL's transport modellers... TfL has indeed many , very detailled and expensive, transport models, that can simulate motorised traffic flow in 2030, but have strictly no understanding of what is going on with cyclists even in 2011...
Sad, but in their mind, why would they would you want to model cyclists in a transport model??

For having the opportunity to work on the Gent Model, I can say that even from a strategical point of view, cyclists needs are very differents from the ones from cars:
- a street will cobbled stones will be avoided by cyclists who will rather make a detour through better paved streets, etc
- the impact of steady gradiens is major in route choice, etc
and obviously all streets are two-ways for cyclists :-)

Unknown said...

We have those counters here as well...Of course it's for motorized traffic...But it does pass through the bike lanes so I get to ride over it :p