At streets.mn, I have the following post: Diminishing returns of off-street bicycle facilities.
“Some attention to my previous post seemed to stem from the incredulity of implying anything negative about the Midtown Greenway—one of America’s most beloved darlings of a bike path […]“
As part of an interesting FIVE part series focusing on different considerations in the paths that people take for travel (i.e., why is it not always the shortest?), the Transportationist discusses our bicycle route choice experiment.
Who would have ever thought that a 7 foot structure that did nothing more than count the number of vehicles passing by could create such a buzz?
We know that select cities in Europe have these counting devices. But that is Europe. I have often wondered what US city would be the first to the start line. It looks like Seattle wins the cake.
The counter is is made by Eco Counter, and the model is the Eco Totem. Here is some information from the manufacturer. The good news is that we tested the Eco Counter and it was pretty reliable.
A PhD student at the University of Maryland, Rahul Nair, did an operations based dissertation on vehicle sharing. He is now fortunately sharing his skills to the bicycle planning world. Check out the 1.4 million trips he graphically analyzed from the capital bicycle share system in Washington, D.C. spread across 140 stations. Edward Tufte would be proud. But moreso, it is great to see this bikesharing data now being analyzed. This is the first step to having better informed conversations about the degree to which these systems are worth it and to whom. 
