Seattle bike count decided before it even started

It would be surprising if the outcome of an annual bike count was anything but beneficial to the bicycle community, KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson points out.

Think about it: the Washington State Department of Transportation teamed up with the Cascade Bicycle Club to benchmark the number of people biking and walking on trails, bike lanes and sidewalks. Count organizer and principal planner for the bike club, Andrea Clinkscales, already knows what she wants the outcome to be.

“So we can make the case to policy makers that hey, we need more money for better infrastructure …,” she explained.

The end result has already been decided, Dori explains. They want more money for bicycles.

“It’s not going to be an honest count,” Dori continued.

Then what’s the point?

“Getting money,” he said. “Can you imagine they are going to say, ‘oh, the count was way lower than we expected.'”

The bike club recruited bike advocates to do the count, Dori believes. If two people rode past on bikes, a counter is going to say 42 rode past, he says. The count was scheduled for Sept. 29-30 and/or Oct. 1.

“It’s going to be a phony count,” Dori said. “The count is not going to be surprisingly low. And I guarantee you when it comes out, everyone is going to be pleasantly surprised.”

The count is most likely going to result in more money being pumped into the city for bike purposes, just like Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s budget proposal to spend $15 million on a bike-share program.

Then again, maybe nobody signed up to volunteer for the count, because they couldn’t remember what the URL for the website was. Listen to the podcast to hear Dori have some fun with that.