Either you count everyone, or you are discriminating against those you don't count. I suppose that is a worldview that could be considered ideology, but I had hoped it would be one that would we could agree upon. You make it sound as if I am advocating prejudice, when in fact I am advocating exactly the opposite.
UW has, for the past several years at least, collected the best data that we could on bicycle use, once or twice a year. And we paid a few student employees to do it, even though there is no budget specifically for that. We have plans to collect data on the use of the Campus Drive and the Lakeshore Paths. I would love to coordinate our efforts with the City of Madison and the Village of Shorewood Hills. It would be wonderful, for example, if bicycle traffic on University Ave and Dayton Street, both corridors within the City's ROW, were counted. As I posted earlier on this list, I was fairly dismayed to note that the city placed a hose counter on Dayton St just east of Park St (essentially at East Campus Mall) a few months ago, but was making no apparent effort to count any road users that the hose counter cannot identify (which is to say, everyone outside of a heavy motor vehicle - apparently city staff aren't even sure if the hose counters count light motorcycles or mopeds). This was particularly troublesome since that area sees such a high number of pedestrians, bicyclists, and mopeds). ________________________________ From: Larry D. Nelson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 9:08 AM To: STRAWSER, Charles; [email protected] Subject: RE: [Bikies] Annual Traffic Vol Ideology aside, can you establish and count the major paths on the west side of the UW Campus in coordination with the City of Madison and the Village of Shorewood? From: STRAWSER, Charles [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 8:48 AM To: Larry D. Nelson; [email protected] Subject: RE: [Bikies] Annual Traffic Vol Absolutely, bikes should be counted everywhere. So should pedestrians. Larry said, "We discussed volunteers conducting bike counts on this listserve before but some folks were concerned that this would somehow manifest a subordination of bikes to cars. Perhaps we should revisit this issue." ------------------ As far as data collection goes, there is a subordination of bikes (and pedestrians) to Motor Vehicles, since with the one exception you pointed out, Motor Vehicles are all the city counts. Would the US Census be accurate if it only counted those folks in the demographic majority? Does the Census pay people to collect data on the demographic majority, and then expect volunteers to collect the data on everyone else? Since the long term transportation planning is based on data collection and projections made from the data collected, the city should collect data on ALL road users, not just Motor Vehicles. As long as the city only collects data comprehensively on one road user group, transportation planning (and spending) is going to be biased in favor of the only road user group that gets counted. It's great that bikes have been counted for the North Shore/John Nolen Drive Corridor. But if we only collected data on Motor Vehicles using the beltline, then how would we ever plan for the rest of our transportation facilities. And while I would prefer that bikes (and peds) get counted through any means necessary, I find it offensive that the city spends resources to count one user group and expects volunteers to perform one of the most basic planning functions of the city. And, no, I don't think Parks' Friends groups are particularly analogous to this, since the reason Parks Have Friends groups is because their budgets are tiny compared to the money the city spends planning, building, and maintaining transportation infrastructure. chuck ________________________________ From: Larry D. Nelson Subject: [Bikies] Annual Traffic Vol The City Traffic Engineer has posted the Annual Traffic Volume Report for 2009. The link follows: http://www.cityofmadison.com/trafficEngineering/documents/Reports-Studies/200 9VR.pdf The trend for diminished traffic in the isthmus and near west and near east side continues. In the years 2000 - 2004, traffic in the central part of the city peaked and has been diminishing each year since that peak. I speculate that less traffic in the central part of the city is a reflection of less jobs and less commercial sites that generate traffic. Traffic on the perimeter of the city continues to increase, suggesting that people are travelling around the city rather than to the city. Surprisingly, the bike numbers are also down in 2009. However, bike monitoring is confined to the North Shore/John Nolen Drive Corridor. It would be helpful if the bike numbers for the SW, University, and East Isthmus Path (Capital City Trail) were included. We discussed volunteers conducting bike counts on this listserve before but some folks were concerned that this would somehow manifest a subordination of bikes to cars. Perhaps we should revisit this issue.
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