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PermalinkThursday, December 20, 2012
Above: Sherry Ryan, a professor of city planning at San Diego State University who manages the Bike Count program, and Chris Kluth, the senior active transportation planner for SANDAG talk to KPBS about "Bike Count."
Why Are San Diego State Researchers Counting Bicyclists?
Aired 12/21/12
GUESTS
Sherry Ryan, Ph.D is a professor of city planning at San Diego State University. She manages the Bike Count program.
Chris Kluth, Senior Active Transportation Planner SANDAG
Howard LaGrange is an avid cyclist. He co-chairs Oceanside's Bike and Pedestrian Committee.
Bicycling is fun. It's also an important part of city planners' vision of our future. As a region, we have to cut our carbon footprint even as the population grows. So planners and government officials think researching who is biking where is worth the investment. That's just what San Diego is doing.
Researchers from San Diego State University's Active Transportation Research Center have undertaken the most extensive bicycle count system in the nation.
"Bike Count" began with a $16 million grant to the San Diego County Health Department. It paid for the installation of electronic sensors in 28 locations in San Diego County. There are monitors in 13 cities. Sixteen locations are in the city of San Diego.
The bike sensors have been in place now for about three months, and they tell us a lot about bike traffic volume in San Diego. The number of daily bike trips, on a given road, can range from 25 to 2,500.
Sherry Ryan, a professor of city planning at San Diego State University who manages the Bike Count program, told KPBS they are also using infrared sensors attached to street posts to count pedestrians.
She said their method for counting bikes, using a loop in the road that registers bikers, is innovative, and that their vendor is the only one that provides this service.
Chris Kluth, the senior active transportation planner for SANDAG, said the data will be used to plan the best places for bike facilities.
Both Kluth and Ryan said male cyclists are seen far more often than women, and Kluth added that women cyclists are more commonly seen in areas with more bikers overall.
Claire Trageser contributed to this report.
Comments
sanchoamigo | December 24, 2012 at 11:57 a.m. ― 4 months, 3 weeks ago
Proffesor Ryan is way out left field. She is making statements coming out of her own mind and not based on any scientific data. The bicycle network is not built for women, low income hispanics going to and from work in the north county! (she almost said undocumented!) Give me a break, those counters only log that a bike is going by. Now, her observations about who is using bikes on the road are as good as mine. So here it goes, along the coast you will find mostly mean upper middle class (yes, look at the price of the bikes that they ride, the gear attire, the precious time that they have to invest in improving their health and life, etc.) white men and women yelling at pedestrians to get out of the way (Left! Right!) along the paths; in the mid city, a multi culture of working class kids and adults, man and women. SANDAG should start investing on sidewalks that are used by vastly more numbers of users, are not mainly fro recreation, and are directly tied to transit. Every transit rider gets on sidewalk after getting off the bus.
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