Photo of the Day: Half a million bikes

Christchurch’s Major Cycle Routes have helped to fuel an impressive surge in numbers of people cycling around the city over the past few years. One of the busiest locations is at the Antigua Boatshed bridge, where an electronic display helps show passersby how many people have biked past the spot each day and for the year overall. And this week, a major milestone was reached there…

Yep, the site recorded more than 500,000 people biking past in the year to date. There was some excitement this week as that number loomed into view and the lucky 500,000th person duly arrived early afternoon on Thu 12th Dec. By the time I took this photo at about 4.30pm on Fri 13th, over 2000 more people had been past.

{I have to say, it’s really hard to take a decent photo of this display with its fast-flickering LEDs; trying to combine a slower aperture speed without overexposing is quite tricky…}

For those of you playing at home, that equates to over 1400 bike counts a day – in the past month alone the average was over 1500 with weekday peaks over 2000. Some naysayers invariably quibble that this doesn’t reflect how many people biked past, arguing that most people bike there and back to their destinations – ignoring the fact that the same logic applies to motor vehicle counts on roads too (in fact they’re more likely to make multiple trips on the same road…). There’s some feedback that the counter doesn’t always pick up some of the niche carbon-fibre bikes, so that figure is likely to be understated too (and no, they don’t pick up scooters, prams, steel-capped boots, etc…).

Every time that people grumble that they “never see anyone cycling”, this display counter is a tangible reminder to everyone that cycling in Christchurch is all around…

Were you one of the 500,000 this year?