Thanks for your different perspective Matt; as a researcher it is always helpful to have a sceptical view on any data. I certainly agree that we could do with more counters around the city to help expand the picture of who’s cycling where (e.g. there are no counters along my route to work) although the Strava heatmap also on SmartView is a useful proxy in the meantime. As further Major Cycleways get built we will certainly see more counters on these routes at least.

It’s not really relevant that a person might ride past the same counter more than once a day; the same also applies to motor vehicle trips and no-one complains about that; it’s still a trip that needs to be catered for. We’ve always been clear that this data is recording the number of TRIPS, not people; again, like driving, it is likely that some people get counted at multiple locations across the city. Fortunately, we have other data sources that can tell us how many people might be cycling, e.g. the 10,000/day riding to work from the Census (fortunately the most recent Census will also tell us how many are cycling to study). We also have data on the number of residents who cycle at some stage – a higher proportion than many people realise: http://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/2017/03/06/mythbusting-hardly-anyone-cycles/

The number plate request is also a red herring because a Police office can still stop a cyclist they observe doing something wrong (this is how most motor vehicle offences are captured too). Given that over 10,000 bicycle infringements are handed out each year in NZ, evidently that is already happening (yep, plenty go unpunished, but that is no different to the countless infringements we all see drivers make as well without consequence). Various investigations elsewhere of bicycle/cyclist registration schemes have invariably found that they would cost more than they recoup in fines or other benefits; indeed, they are likely to put some people off cycling.

Watch this space because another cycling related initiative on the way from the Smart Cities team will be the launch of Fabriko’s Sensibel. This nifty little button is attached to your handlebars and allows you to record positive and negative experiences of your ride!

Good spotting Wayne. When the Smart Cities team (the creators of SmartView Christchurch) displayed the data, we discovered we were showing a combined count of pedestrians and cycles. Our developer quickly sorted that out with our CCC cycling planners and the data provider and the numbers showing on SmartView are now cyclists only. We posted that message up briefly until we had accurate data.

Your assumption is that the heat map is Strava data is also correct. The interesting thing about that data is that there is an extremely strong correlation between Strava user patterns and non-Strava cycling patterns.

Please keep on using SmartView and let us know any comments, suggestions, issues, compliments via the Feedback tile.
For instance, if you or your friends are bus users, there’s a pretty cool live bus tracker feature under development. 🙂 Check out https://smartview.ccc.govt.nz/#map/layer/bus-routes;real-bus-position.

You are right Sara. The ‘totem pole’ is coming! It has arrived in Christchurch and will be situated on a popular Christchurch major cycle route within the next month. If you want to know what the ‘totem pole’ will be like, check out this article https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/81900693/prime-minister-john-key-geared-up-on-aucklands-quay-st-cycleway

Most of the count sites aren’t counting peds (eg Hagley Park) so I couldn’t quite figure out what that was about. Loops and tubes on the ground won’t pick up pedestrians. There are some overhead (microwave?) detectors that pick up both, but usually they’re smart enough to also tell them apart.

That note is now gone, but the numbers are similar to what they were.

do you know anything about this?

There’s a cool heatmap function on smartview too, I assume taken from Strava’s dataset