SDOT’s bike numbers misleading ‘political propaganda’

A milestone for bicyclists was reached in the city of Seattle and it’s got activists and the Seattle Department of Transportation jumping for joy – literally.

It’s a bit of misleading propaganda meant to push a pro-bike, anti-car agenda that will lead to Seattle becoming an exclusive city for the rich, which ironically, is what these same activists constantly complain about.

According to SDOT, over one million bikes crossed the Fremont Bridge in 2014. It’s a headline that is subtly misleading.

They write, “The number’s so large it’s hard to wrap your head around. But here in SDOT, we started jumping up and down with enthusiasm when we saw that the Fremont Bridge bike counter had topped one million!”

Then SDOT uses that number to justify the millions of dollars they’ve committed to bike infrastructure projects in the city, at the expense of drivers.

“With so many people crossing the bridge every day, the addition of a new protected bike lane along Westlake Avenue N is going to be a great benefit. […] To make it safer and more predictable to ride along Dexter, SDOT is partnering with WSDOT to rechannelize the street between Mercer and Denny Way. This rechannelization swaps the location of the parking and current bike lane to create a new protected bike lane. Construction of this project will be phased in throughout 2015, with the first portion expected to be completed in January.”

Awesome.

Now, let’s talk about how this blog post is misleading and is truly tantamount to political propaganda.

Starting with the title, “One Million Bikes Cross the Fremont Bridge in 2014!” Combine that with the line, “with so many people crossing the bridge every day…” you start to get the idea that a million people are biking around Seattle, a city of about 650,000.

SDOT links to a blog post from the activist Seattle Bike Blog, which makes the same case. They say “Biking is growing in Seattle. A lot.” This Fremont crossing number proves it.

Does the data back up the notion that “a lot” of people are taking up bikes in a meaningful way? Not even close. Not this data anyway. Though I do believe there’s been an increase in biking over the last few years, this data just doesn’t make that point.

So the counter that they use at Fremont bridge, according to SDOT, has a specialized loop embedded in each sidewalk (on either side of the bridge) that detects the metal frame of a bicycle.

This counter wasn’t paid for by you and I. It was donated by the Cascade Bicycling Club, a political advocacy group that promotes bicycling.

So the political group that has a vested interest in promoting bicycling donated a device to the city to use to come up with data that would lead to an increase in funding for bicycling.

It’s important to understand that if you ride your bike from your home in Fremont, over the bridge, to your job downtown, then you ride back the same route, that counts as two trips, not two people taking two separate trips, but two trips total.

To put that number in perspective, say the same person bikes that route to and from home to work five days a week, and they do it every week for every month of the year. That represents 480 trips, not 480 riders.

SDOT doesn’t have any actual data to back up that more bicyclists are riding. The data could just as easily suggest the same bicyclists who were riding the route one time a week or two times a week, are riding several times a week. In other words, it could be the same bicyclist using their bike more often. That’s good. I’d rather them ride their bike than drive because it’s less traffic for drivers, but that’s all that means. It doesn’t mean there are more riders.

If you look at the data coming from the city about people who actually regularly ride their bikes, the number is so small it doesn’t justify investing $400 million in the bike infrastructure.

All the data suggests biking is the least likely way people commute to work, in and around Seattle. More people telecommute than bicycle. More people walk and ride-share than bicycle. According to the 2012 Downtown Seattle Modesplit Survey, only three percent of commuters get downtown via bike.

The city gets excited saying bicycling is growing at a rate higher than driving. Well, of course. Look at what you’re comparing. A huge portion of people already drive and a small portion bike. If you have even a modest bump in biking, the percentage is going to reflect higher than the actual number.

The percentage growth going from one to 100 is higher than the rate of 100,000 to 100,001. But the number of drivers still trumps biking by a country mile.

Then in 2013, to try to trump up the number of bicyclists in the city, SDOT claims proudly that 158,000 Seattleites ride bikes – though 66 percent of them actually do it for recreation (which generally means not during the morning and afternoon commutes when there are so many cars on the road they might need additional safety measures taken on their behalf.) When you read the details of the data, they point out these folks ride a bicycle, “at least occasionally” and that the numbers remained relatively flat from 2011 to 2012.

These folks are trying to prop up the rate of bicyclists in this city because they have an agenda that takes people out of cars and puts them onto bikes.

Some might call that laudable. I certainly take no issue with people who choose to bike rather than drive, and they certainly should be offered reasonable safe passages to downtown and South Lake Union.

But it’s important to see through this propaganda so you can at least make an informed decision, even if you side with SDOT’s desire to get more people on bikes.

My stance on this has been consistent. We should spend a reasonable amount of money, proportional to the limited rates people ride their bicycles. We shouldn’t change the infrastructure around to accommodate the few at the expense of many drivers. We should make infrastructure changes to streets that actually make sense for everyone and not just bicyclists. We shouldn’t spend an arm and a leg pushing for a utopian bicycling society that will never happen here.