Burrard Street Bridge counter clocks 1,000,000 rides

At some point on Thursday, August 20, the automatic bike counter at the southern end of the Burrard Street Bridge, spanning False Creek in Vancouver, rolled over, clocking one million rides.

And that’s just accounting for the last eight months.

The impressive numbers can be attributed to a variety of factors, the City of Vancouver published. 2015 has seen some pretty ideal weather for riding, for one. For another, as Canadian Cycling Magazine reported, 2015 has also seen a dramatic uptick in the frequency of cycling on Vancouver-area streets in general, thanks to the availability of new, more progressive infrastructure for riding. June 2015, in particular, was a record year for riding in Vancouver.

Looking more closely at the data collected by the Burrard Street Bridge bike counter, the daily average of trips taken by bike across False Creek has risen, too. In June, that daily average hit the 6,400 mark — an increase of nearly a thousand from just a year earlier, when the average daily number was 5,500 in June, 2014. On weekends, the data shows, that margin increases even more. With 6,600 trips, the previous record of 4,200 on a given weekend was eclipsed by more than 2,000 rides.

Such an increase in cycling, city staff went on the record in saying, can be attributed to one thing: new, better, and more inclusively-designed bike lanes across the Greater Vancouver Area.

“Overall,” the City of Vancouver said, “the City has seen a continued year-over-year increase in the use of its bike lanes as more residents adapt to cycling, in part due to infrastructure built for people of all ages and abilities.” Notably, the numbers recorded indicate the frequency of cycling in a time period just less than a year. The Burrard Street Bridge counter was installed back in January, 2015.

In addition to the Burrard Street Bridge counter, another exists near the entrance to Science World, just beside the False Creek bike lane.