Over 3 days in April, cyclist data was collected from 4 major intersections in downtown Savannah by a group of community volunteers — thanks to the awesome Campaigners who joined in this effort! This was second annual Bike Census, so we have for the first time data to compare against the previous year.
The most striking statistics were changes in helmet usage and gender balance. The proportion of total cyclists observed wearing helmets doubled over 2009 figures, although the share of these cyclists is still only ~10% of the total observed riders. The gender balance of observed riders also demonstrated a significant change, with a 33% increase in the proportion of women cyclists over the 2009 share. This brought the female share of observed cyclists to ~24% of the total. This brings Savannah up to a position above the national average of 21.3% female cyclists. Way to go, bicycling ladies — let’s see if we can get that number even higher!
The headline statistic is that there was an observed increase of 110% in total cyclists over the four intersections combined from last year, although a few factors made this year’s total higher than last year.
- First: SCAD wasn’t almost on Spring Break during this count as they were last year.
- Second: in contrast to the unseasonably cold March days on which we counted in 2009, the weather was fairly nice during this count.
- Third: the greater number of volunteers this year allowed this year’s total to be chiefly observed, rather than extrapolated over the course of the 10 hour study window.
This means that this year’s data was probably a more representative count than last year’s; or more simply, last year’s count was almost certainly artificially low.
Still, a win’s a win, and this is a huge increase, not only in total number of riders observed, but also very importantly in the proportion of women and the proportion of riders protecting their noodles with lids. Stay tuned for the next census, as we hope to see those trends continue.
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[…] reported yesterday by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign. A recently completed bicycle census finds that bicycle use in Savannah has increased dramatically, or at least was seriously underestimated in the …. Either way, there is more excellent news about who is riding in Savannah. As described here, […]
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