Six years of the Goldsmith's Row cycle counter

August 2019 marked six years since a cycle counter was added onto the newly reconstructed Goldsmith's Row and so it is time for my annual update on the numbers of people cycling along this bicycle only road

48 bicycles on Goldsmiths Row so far this year pic.twitter.com/mql2kVX1K8

— Hackney Cyclist (@Hackneycyclist) 1 January 2019

As I reported last year the number of people cycling along Goldsmith's Row in the 2017-2018 year was a record low, along with some record low days, weeks and months, so I was keen to see if there had been any increase or if cycling along this road has seen a long term decline. 2018-2019 started well in September, with over 108k people cycling along here; that was an increase of over 8% on September 2017 but still lower than the other four Septembers on record - 16,000 more people cycled along here in September 2014 than they did in September 2018. October saw 113k cycle trips, a big increase again on last year and the highest October of all time. November saw a slight decrease on last year but December was up over 14%, although still the second lowest December recorded.

2019 started well with over 88k cycle trips making it the highest January of all time and February saw a huge increase of over 20% on last year. The "Beast from the East" broke the cycle counter for two months in 2018 so we can't do year-on-year comparisons for March or April. May saw a slight increase on last year but June 2019 was down over 8% on June 2018 and the second lowest June of all time. July 2019 saw record breaking temperatures which tends to bring more people out on their bikes; over 128k people cycled along Goldsmith's Row in this month, the second highest month of all time. 108k cycle trips in August was also a slight increase on last year 

The July heatwave meant that two days from this year made their way into the Top Ten; July 23rd is at No. 7 and July 24th is at No. 9 with temperatures of over 30c on both days. 

Ten highest daily totals:

03/06/14     6624
09/07/15     6380
20/08/13     5825
19/07/16     5817
21/08/13     5785
17/09/13     5778
23/07/19     5776
13/09/16     5706
24/07/19     5668
06/08/15     5643

And Christmas Day last year makes it into No. 9 on the top ten lowest days. The 13 lowest days all fall on either Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Years Day. 

Ten lowest daily totals:

26/12/17     251
01/01/14     256
26/12/14     292
25/12/15     300
01/01/17     318
26/12/13     321
26/12/16     349
26/12/15     359
25/12/18     368
25/12/16     369

Total for the year is a few thousand short of 1.2 million. Technically a big increase on last year but the counter did not work for two months last year so a year-on-year comparison isn't really possible 

The total number of bicycle trips along Goldsmith's Row for the six year period between 1st September 2013 and 31st August 2019 is 7,059,327 (although two different periods of outages will mean the total will actually be slightly higher than that).

In Summary; more people cycled along Goldsmith's Row this year than they did last year but fewer people are cycling along here in 2017, 2018 and 2019 than they were in 2013, 2014 and 2015. I do wonder if people have switched to other routes since the construction of protected cycle infrastructure under Boris Johnson. I used to cycle along Hackney Road everyday from 2013-2016 but have now switched to CS2 instead, which has seen a 54% increase in cycling according to TfL. It's also interesting to note that even though Goldsmith's Row has been upgraded to a "quietway" and linked with Shoreditch via the Columbia Road quietway this has seen no increase in people using it by bike, quite the opposite. Surely the time has come to finally construct protected cycle tracks on Hackney Road.