This definitely has to change as we enter the era of multimodalism in America. I don’t see this country becoming a car-free utopia in our lifetimes. What I see is people cutting down on their driving substantially to the point where they are only driving half or even a third of the time. Our counting methods should reflect this.

My commute today included eight minutes of driving, 40 minutes of commuter rail, 13 minutes of subway, 10 minutes of bus and 10 minutes of walking. Not your average commute, but I can see a lot of people doing two or even three modes of transportation in one day.

The census only asks about your primary mode of transportion to and from work. Period. If that is 51% car, you go down the same as 100% car. If you have limited work trips, but they are all by car, you go down as 100% car.

Due to family circumstances, I drive a bike full time two weeks out of the month, and ride a car to commute the other two weeks with the bike taking up the balance of errands, including many family errands on four bikes and a trailer. I probably drive a bike for 70-80% of my total trips monthly — but for strictly commute time, last census esp., I was over 50% work trips by car. SO: although I drive a bike as my primary transportation and have gotten rid of one of our cars this year, I registered on that census as a car rider.

I do not understand the resistance to doing actual counts. What are they afraid of? The same issue arrises for pedestrians, where there is no goodf data, but planners claim that everyone knows nobody walks anywhere. Nothing gets better when stereotype-based “estimates” and outmoded inappropriate counts pass for real data; the resulting planning perpetuates a car-centric culture.

Amazing.

My one small worry is that if LACBC recruits all sorts of hardcore riders to help count, will that depress the number of cyclists on the road? Probably very slightly.

(1) In California, we discriminate against one modal group only when it comes to counting them on the roads. Yep, we’re talking about “recreational” cyclists being ignored intentionally (whatever that means when I’m running errands with my daughter playing in the bakfiets) and “commuter” cyclists being officially counted. It would behoove us, as cyclists, to end this ridiculous system by showing how cyclist counts ought to be done and compare the two sets of data to show how skewed the state’s system is.

(2) If anyone wants to have a place to chill and count traffic, the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop has a nice table, chairs, bathroom, transit and freeway access. I will compensate you for the time you spend on the LACBC’s behalf doing a cyclist count in the NELA area (if that is legal), specifically along the corridor in front of my store.

The concern I have is whether or not these bike counts will be seen as credible by the general public. Bike activists doing bike counts reminds me of the debate over how many people have died as a result of the Iraq war. The number you get depends on who you ask. Generally, the anti-war people give higher numbers and the pro-war people give lower numbers, if they give any at all.

So, it’s important that these counts be conducted with integrity, preferably with 3rd-party oversight. I’m not accusing anyone of being dishonest. I’m just saying, anticipate your opponents’ criticism.

The key is to have an educated group doing the counts. It doesn’t help to have people counting cyclists in door zones if they don’t know what a door zone is!