1 million bike rides

It might be enough to make your legs feel tired, but there's been 1 million bike rides already this year, past my favourite bike counter.

I missed the day itself as we've had a lot of wet weather recently; though obviously not bad enough to stop other people riding bikes. It happened sometime around mid-October.

If you saw my previous post on this, I'm comparing it to how many people use the sports stadium nearby. The rugby league season has now ended with a total Broncos' home game attendance of 401,421.

Already this one bike-path is 2.5 times more popular - and there's still a few months to go.

UPDATE: a couple of days after the photo above, I say the sign tick over from 1049999 to 1050000. My attempt to capture it was seconds too slow and another rider ticked it over one extra.

It's a bit like that feeling - back in the car days - of seeing the odometer tick over another milestone. Except this feeling doesn't come with an obligatory car servicing, or thinking about how much I've wasted on fuel.

Space Invaders (cars)

Nobody likes being stuck in traffic. But there's a simple solution.

In the 80s video game Space Invaders the invaders were from space. Today's space invaders are invaders of space.

Next time you're in traffic, try to count 50 cars in front of you. If you're on a 3-lane road try to count 17 cars in front.

In most situations it's further than you can see. But that's how much traffic could be removed with just one bus.

My local public transport agency gives out these stickers to illustrate the point.

Even though there's not even 50 cars on the picture, is still demonstrates how obvious the solution to traffic is.

Which is more popular: Bike-riding or football?

We've now passed half a million bikes on my favourite bike counter (it's the only one I know of).

Here's photo from Friday night. There were a few passers-by who had been to the football. It got me wondering. Which is more popular bike-riding or football?

So I looked up the stats. the stadium just around the corner from this bike counter is primarily for the Brisbane Broncos. According to wikipedia the total homegame crowds this season is 131,756. Add in Friday night's crowd and it's about 160,000.

With the bike counter at 521,000 it seems that bikeriding is more than 3 times as popular. And that's just on this one little piece of the bikeway network.

It's interesting that we spend so much on stadiums and so little on bikeways.

Previous posts about the counter:
250,000 people on bikes
How many bicycles?

250,000 people on bikes

Today I rode past the bikeway bicycle counter again. (See January's post)

Just over 2 months, and we've had a quarter of a million people on bikes - just on this particular piece of bikeway.

Looks like we'll pass a million by year's end.

How many do you think it will be?
Put your guess in the comments and we'll see who gets the closest.

How many bicycles?

Late last year the city council installed this bicycle and pedestrian counter on my local bikeway.

I especially like the little logos. It makes it feel like a sports competition. How active and healthy can Brisbane be?

I took this photo today, 26 January. There have been more than 100,000 people on bikes go past the point in less than a month. Exciting to know that the bikeway is so well used.

PS. See the March update.