Possibly achieved the greatest accomplishment of my #ottbike life today I am so darn excited guys I don't even know where to start...!
I didn't do anything except for ask (&keep asking) for data from @ottawacity Traffic Services. Phil Landry at the city agreed to dedicate student(?) hours into counting the number, approx age, & gender of cyclists based on the Level of Traffic Stress at different locations
So now there is #data for 19 different locations in the city where we not only have demographic information (subjective, assessed by observers), but also the Level of Traffic Stress. I had some questions driving my desire for this data.
The LTS criteria can be found here northeastern.edu/peter.furth/re… and you can visualize the LTS for all Ottawa roads and pathways at maps.bikeottawa.ca
It’s going to take me a while to sift through all of the data but I hope to share some details with you over the weekend. Will find out if the city has posted it on their webpage somewhere so that it is publicly available.
All of the data was collected on Tues/Wed/Thur in August & September 2019. Only 2 hour windows from 7-9am and 3:30-5:30pm, to best represent commute hours and to allow staffing coverage. Cyclists were counted by direct observation by staff.
Areas surveyed included the downtown core (9 sites), inside the greenbelt (5 sites), &suburban sites (5 sites). The most easterly site was Billings Ave east of Fairbanks Ave. The limitations on time and availability by staff were stated to be factors that reduced site choices.
I was able give recommendations for survey locations. I suggested some intersections where the LTS was the same in all directions, and a few appear to have been chosen for data collection. City staff would have selected the bulk of the survey locations.
Along with the limited time of day & only middle days of the week that data was collected, observations only occurred on days when the weather was good. Rainy weather and slick riding surfaces are both shown to be a deterrent to cycling cyclingincities.spph.ubc.ca/motivating-cyc…
Another big limitation is that this data is based on observations. Perceived or actual gender by the observer is full of bias, and as we learn more about sex and gender-based analysis, there are more nuances (eg. risk tolerance, aggression) than can possibly be explored here.
Thankfully the report author clearly acknowledged the limitations of observation. The same issue might apply with observations of the age of riders. Lastly, an unknown number of surveyors were used, so whether there was good inter/intra rater reliability is another unknown.
Data: 5,930 cyclists in total were counted over 19 survey sites. 39.8% were counted as female, while 60.2% were counted as male. Children in bike seats/trailers were 1.2%, 1.6% were children riding their own bike, 53.% youths (teenage), 87.2% adults, and 4.6% senior riders
Here is the observed gender breakdown through different age groups of riders (taken directly from report) 
Not sure how the surveyor determined the gender of the children in bike seats, but no obvious reason to me why there wouldn't be parity at that age. Not surprising to see decreased level of participation by women in the other age groups (consistent with rest of North Am)/
I have only seen data that suggests parity (or even more women than men) in Copenhagen, and other Scandanavian countries theguardian.com/cities/2015/ju…
Whereas we see and average around 20-25% participation in North America. Ottawa is doing quite well if we look at this small sample of commute-focused data. qz.com/quartzy/174512…
The LTS data is a bit complex to delve into but I will share the charts & graphs that have been prepared. First up, # of cyclists by LTS. This will be influenced by the number of sites of each type of LTS.
Unfortunately different infra types do not fit neatly into 1 LTS classification. LTS 3 could mean riding on the shoulder/unprotected bike lane with higher traffic speeds, or riding a sharrow at slightly lower traffic speeds. You might be tolerant of 1, but not the other.
Here is how the author described the sites:
There is a visible trend (not tested with statistics) that shows that women appear to cycle less on higher LTS routes compared to lower LTS routes.
Another interesting chart that shows where children will ride, but especially for children as passengers, and children on bikes- shows where adults will allow them to be.
The author notes that youths make up 8.7% of shared lane users, which was the highest youth participation rate of any facility type. Do youths have a higher tolerance to risk, or are the perceived risks or discomforts less bothersome to them at the higher levels of LTS?
Shared lane routes may be neighbourhood routes with quiet streets, but they may also be roads with sharrows. The experience can be quite different as a cyclist, so it is helpful that this report presents the data in both contexts, even if it doesn't tell us "why".
Bedtime for now... I'll be back with more tomorrow!
*I wish I had written “folks” or “awesome bike people” here instead of “guys”.* I’m still slipping out of saying gender neutral terms at times I guess. Working on it!
Okay, back at it: Shared lanes make up a significant part of the road network and the city sees them playing a role for cyclists in a number of ways-
Here are the shared lane locations, indicated on the Strava heat map (note: I really appreciated the report writers use of other sources of cycling ridership information like this, and the LTS map from maps.bikeottawa.ca)
The next couple of charts/analyses tell an interesting story. Ridership in the core, inside greenbelt, and suburbs were compared. Perhaps not best way to present this data... but remember there were 9, 5, and 5 of each of those respective survey sites.
The report author concludes that women's participation in cycling was lower at sites further away from the core. However seniors participation was steady, highest inside the greenbelt. I have a couple of thoughts: /
1) If seniors are willing to bike at constant proportion throughout the city, this may be because they have more time. Many would be retired and those that are healthy may make more time for recreation (maybe they are more likely to be healthy because they bike?)/
2) Women who live in the suburbs have the lowest proportion of participation in cyclice, possibly as a consequence of factors that include (but probably not limited to) local bike facilities, neighbourhood amenities, and the increased likelihood of trip chaining.
Here is the proportion of children that ride in the different areas of the city. Remember "Youths" are teenagers (bike independently) while the other 2 classes of children would be in the presence of an adult. There was a significant drop in child riders/passengers in the suburbs
This is the map used to define different areas of the city:
This figure shows the average # of cyclists by facility type Counts were obtained at only 1 footbridge location, and 1 paved shoulder. Data was averaged from 5 multiuse pathways, 5 shared lanes, 4 bikes lanes, 3 separated bike lane/cycletracks.
To me this could be a pretty good indicator of route preference, with the caveats that the Flora footbridge acts to shorten the distance between 2 points so that can be something that facilitates making trips shorter.
Further, the Flora Footbridge was opened at the end of June 2019, so was still less than 2 months old when the surveying started, and was therefore a new attraction on its own. I live in the neighbourhood and noted a buzz and new interest in cycling to it as a destination.
Those of you who have an interest in the dynamic between using shared lanes out of choice vs. out of necessity, I think you may find this sentence interesting. If all routes were equally appealing and accessible, then 26% of the sites should account for 26% of the people on bike.
Also, a caution about the single survey site for the Paved Shoulder data:
as a list:
The report concludes there is a trend of higher proportion of women riding bikes:
They attribute this in part to the city's efforts between 2011-2019 to build more separated and protected cycling facilities
They acknowledge the popularity of the city's separated infrastructure that was especially evident in data from the Women and Children indicator groups.
For now that is where I will end this thread. The report author is Alex Culley at the Traffic Services Branch at @ottawacity. He deserves loads of #ottbike appreciation for mindfully assembling this data. Phil Landry also should be acknowledged for coming through on this project.
higher proportion of women riding bikes compared to before, I should say!
That should say 5.3% for youths, oops!
