Thread by @DIsaac8

This #CyclingScienceSunday we're going to do something a bit different. I was on Wortley Road (a typical small shopping/dining street) for #PedalPoll, and I informally collected some data on parking and active transportation. The results are SHOCKING (they're actually not).

But first, the cycling numbers. There were 78 cyclists, with a pretty good gender split (42% women, 58% men). 17% were seniors, which is interesting because I've been told that we can't get rid of parking because too many seniors come to Wortley (more on that in a minute).

Almost all the cyclists were white, which is clearly something London needs to work on.

According to London, Wortley gets 8,000 vehicles per day. Assuming most come during the daylight hours, that's ~400 cars/hour. The block between Askin and Bruce has about 20 parking spaces on it. I was curious about how many of those 400 cars/hour would actually stop.

Between 12:00-2:00 on Saturday, only 40 cars actually parked on Wortley Road between Askin and Bruce. Approximately 800 cars drove down the street during that time, which means only ~5% of cars are actually stopping. The parking spaces were never more than half full.

This is important, because on-street parking is extremely dangerous to cyclists, and Wortley has parking on both sides of the street. The infrastructure is actively hostile to cyclists, but we're still there.

https://twitter.com/DIsaac8/status/1366011823401684992

(On a related note, I stayed for a bit after my official count and collected another batch of data I've always been curious about: did you know that 70% of vehicles don't come to a complete stop at the Wortley and Askin intersection?)

It also ruins the ambiance for the many cafes and restaurants on the street. Drivers are just using Wortley as a thoroughfare, the vast majority (95%) aren't actually stopping. This explains why replacing parking with bike lanes is good for business.

https://twitter.com/DIsaac8/status/1391357517532438529

I also counted the pedestrians. There were 220 people walking down Wortley during the two hours I was there. I wasn't able to count how many stopped at businesses, but it was evident that way more than 40 people stopped at Sidetrack and Black Walnut alone.

I wasn't able to collect demographic data, but many of these pedestrians were seniors. So while it's true that lots of seniors come to Wortley, they seem to be coming by active transportation more than by car.

So we have this lovely retail district, which is the perfect spot for a bike lane, but is currently being used as a highway by drivers who don't actually stop and spend time or money there.

Despite that, two full lanes are wasted on mostly empty parking spaces, one of which could be used for bike lanes without making a difference to the actual demand for parking, and which would increase the numbers of cyclists and pedestrians.

Or we could just block the whole area off to cars. They're just using it as a highway anyway, so why shouldn't they go down Ridout, which is actually intended for that? There is loads of parking on side streets and parking lots for the few people that actually do come by car.

There are of course limits to my informal data collection. Some pedestrians could have actually parked out of sight, and people probably park more at different times, and I wasn't able to determine the exact percentage of active transportation users who visited businesses.

But what I saw was a huge amount of parking space sitting empty waiting for cars that never came, which could have been used by the hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians who were actually there, spending time in their community and supporting small businesses.