LACBC Releases Anticipated LA Bike Count Report

Posted: 03/26/2010

The Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition (LACBC) has just released a new report about cyclists and pedestrians across the city of Los Angeles, CA. L.A. Bike Count: Every Cyclist Counts is an in depth assessment of the use of the city’s public streets by bikers and walkers on a typical day for commuting and recreational purposes.

To produce this report, LACBC brought together and trained over 100 community volunteers who contributed hundreds of hours and counted over 14,000 cyclists and 60,000 pedestrians at over 50 strategic locations citywide. The count also included gender, helmet use, sidewalk riding, and riding on the wrong side of the street. All this information can be found in the report and is key in influencing and guiding future decision making about where to focus engineering, education, enforcement, and other improvements to increase bicycling and walking in LA.

Key findings, as mentioned in LACBC’s press release, include:

Overall, women riders were in the minority, accounting for just 15% of all riders observed across the three time periods studied. This translates to a male-to-female ratio of 6:1. These findings speak to the need for safer streets to encourage women, children, and other risk-adverse groups to feel welcome on our public roads.
Helmet use was highest during the weekday morning period (7:00 - 9:30 AM) when 49% of riders wore helmets. These baseline data may be useful for targeting educational campaigns promoting bike safety.
Overall, 4% of bicyclists were observed riding on the wrong side of the street in any given intersection. However, only 2% of riders in intersections with bike infrastructure rode on the wrong side.
Where bike paths and bike lanes are present, 17% of riders were seen riding on sidewalks, compared to 52% where there is no bike infrastructure.

To view the full report and description of LACBC’s efforts, visit http://la-bike.org/index.html