Four years of the Goldsmith's Row cycle counter

I wrote about the Goldsmith's Row cycle street and the cycle counter located on it almost exactly two years ago. The cycle counter has now been there for four years, providing an exact count of the number of cycle trips occurring on this road during that time.

Once again I have worked out the average number of trips made by bicycle each workday, each day at the weekend and also the average for each week in every month. I've also totalled up the number of trips in each calendar month. For ten days in March of this year the cycle counter did not work and recorded zero trips for that period so whilst the average number of trips should be about right, the total number recorded for that month is lower than it actually would have been.

Each year follows roughly the same pattern; the average number of cycle trips is between 3000-4000 each weekday at the beginning of the year, rising above 4000 from June to September in 2014 (except in August), from June to October in 2015, from April to October in 2016 and from May this year. It then dips back down to between 3000-4000 at the end of the year and then between 2000-3000 in every December in all four years

 At the weekend the figure is mostly around 1000-1500 each day during the winter and then above or around 2,000 during the summer, with the exception 2017 where June is the only month (so far) that has averaged above 2,000

The average number of cycle trips per week follows a similar pattern to the average per day and is always between 20,000 and 30,000 except for in every December and in January 2014 and 2017



And then monthly totals also follow the same pattern of being higher in the summer and lower in the winter. There is no change since my last post about this counter; July 2014 remains the month with highest figure when nearly 130,000 cycle trips were made with December 2013 also still the lowest with just over 65,000 trips. The total number of trips per month was always above 100,000 from March to October in 2014, from April to October in both 2015 and 2016 and above 100,000 in each month from May onwards in 2017.



Each year the total number of cycle trips along Goldsmith's Row is roughly 1.2 million

The figures for 2016 to 2017 are wrong of course as the counter didn't count anyone for ten days. If I look at the data for the same ten days in the other three years I have concluded that roughly 31,190 people would have passed through in the time (give or take a few thousand) and so have added that on to try and get a more accurate number, although this still falls short of 1.2 million

Both these yearly totals and the averages show that each year the number of people cycling on Goldsmith's Row has decreased by a small amount. I've been thinking why this could be; young people priced out of the borough and moving further away into areas like Waltham Forest? Young Europeans leaving the UK due to Brexit? With the recent construction of protected cycle tracks nearby are people using a different route? I used to cycle to work along Hackney Road, very close to this counter but since last summer I've shifted over to the much more pleasant CS2 route along the A11 instead. However the decrease is not substantial and it would only take between 50 and 100 more cycle trips here each day to see an increase, so it'll be intriguing to see the figures for next year and weather the decrease in cycling is a trend or a blip.

The total number of cycles passing the counter from installation day on August 12th 2013 to the end of August 2017 was 4,844,422 (although had the counter worked for those ten days this would be closer to 4.87 million). It will tick past the 5 million barrier one day next week (most likely between Thursday and Sunday) but had it been working for those ten days this year then bicycle number 5,000,000 would have peddled past at some point this week.

The ten lowest daily totals were all recorded on either Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Years' Day

Ten lowest daily totals:

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
25/12/16	369
25/12/13	415
25/12/14	419

As for the highest count days once again there is no change since my last post; the 3rd June 2014 remains the highest total with 6,624 trips recorded. Although as I explained then I think this was an error with the counter and the amount was actually lower but I could be completely wrong about that. The next highest total is 6,380 on the 9th July 2015 which was the day a tube strike shut down the entire underground network. These are the only two days where more than 6,000 cycle trips have been counted.

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
13/09/16	5706
06/08/15	5643
20/07/16	5630
01/07/15	5490

Last time I wrote about this cycle counter Goldsmith's Row was London Cycle route 9 but is now Q13, part of the Central London cycle grid. This means that councils are awarded funding from Transport for London's 'vision for cycling' budget to improve these routes for cyclists. Tower Hamlets have improved Columbia Road recently, which connects to Goldsmith's Row as part of the grid (although this route is closed on Sundays and not particularly quiet on weekdays). It used to have very roughly laid cobbles making it uncomfortable to ride on. Now this road has smooth cycle lanes at each side of the road with the cobbles retained in the middle to slow down motor traffic

Before and after on Columbia Road

 It is a very nice upgrade, the only issues are no enforcement of parking on it and it can still be quite busy but filtering Ropley Street to through motor traffic would easily solve that. Hackney Council have also made improvements to the crossing of Hackney Road by bringing the pedestrian crossing alongside the cycle crossing. It used to be located about 20 feet away and so pedestrians just used the cycle crossing instead

Not quite sure why Hackney Council have painted "Q2" here as this is not Q2!

These improvements are welcome but I really wish so much resource was not being spent on quietways. Hackney Road badly needs protected cycle tracks along it, as agreed by Hackney Council in 2015. This could link up with the Clerkenwell Boulevard creating the West End - Old Street - Olympic Park Cycle corridor as suggested in the 2014-2024 cycle plan. An upgraded cycle route along the B108 as proposed by Tower Hamlets Council would then also create a link from this route (and from Hackney Central) south to CS2, CS3 and create safe routes for staff and visitors to The Royal London Hospital. I truly believe if this happened then the numbers on the cycle counter would rise dramatically.   

You can follow the Goldsmith's Row cycle counter totals daily via twitter

Goldsmith's Row cycle counter

Goldsmith's Row runs from just South of the Cat & Mutton Bridge over the Regents Canal to the junction with Hackney Road. It is part of London Cycle Network Route 9 and is a highly used cycle route for people travelling from Hackney Central or Waltham Forest and beyond into Central London as it joins up with the cycle path through London Fields via Broadway Market and continues onto Hackney Town Hall via the partially filtered Martello Street and the bicycle only Hackney Grove via the Richmond Road Crossing. Although it is now often referred to as a cycle route it has been a well used route for centuries, and was formally called the "Black Path" or the "Market Porters Route" as this was where farmers would walk their livestock into the City of London back when London Fields really was just fields and Hackney was a small farming village on the outskirts of the City. This map from nearly 200 years ago gives you a good idea of the route they would have taken via Bird Cage Walk (now Columbia Road) and on through Shoreditch to Smithfield meat market in Farringdon.

A few years ago the bottom half of Goldsmith's Row became a bicycle only road and then in August 2013 a cycle counter was added which, via a sensor buried in the roadway, counts and displays the number of bikes that have been past that day, along with the total so far for the year and similar figures are also displayed on the Hackney Council website, updated daily

A picture I took of the cycle counter a few days after it was installed 

A few months ago I asked Hackney Council for a list of daily counts here since it was installed, they duly obliged but I have only now got round to doing anything with the figures. I've worked out the average number of cycle trips each weekday for each month since August 2013, along with the average number of cycle trips per day at the weekend, as these are always significantly lower (presumably due to the large number of commuters using the route during the week). I've also worked out the average number of cycle trips each week (Monday to Sunday) for each month and then added the total number of cycle trips that took place in each month (minus August 2013 and April 2015 which I don't have the full set of figures for).

Note that I've counted these as the total number of "cycle trips", not the number of "cyclists" as often these will be the same person twice going to and from work, the pub, etc.

2014 is, obviously, the only calendar year where a full set of figures is available but with figures for the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2015 it gives quite a good picture of cycling figures across the year along this road. The average number of cycle trips is at just over 4,000 for August and September 2013, dipping below 4,000 in October and November and then down to just over 2,000 in December. Into 2014 it then rises above 3,000 in January and February, reaching nearly 4,000 from March to May and then hits over 4,500 in June and July before dipping down to under 4,000 in August, rising back above 4,500 in September and then following a similar patter of the year before to the end of 2014. The figures for 2015 are similar to the previous two years averaging between 3,000-4,000 cycle trips per weekday.



The average number of cycle trips at the weekend are (roughly) half of that during the week averaging between 2,000-3,000 over the summer and 1,000-2,000 during the winter. Goldsmith's Row is a popular commuting route so this is to be expected but it is also popular at the weekend due to the market on Broadway Market on Saturday, the Columbia Road flower market on Sunday, the very popular Hackney City Farm and the quiet link it provides to the canal which links up with Victoria Park and other popular cycling green areas. Interestingly the Christmas & New Year week at the end of 2013 is the only time that cycle trips are actually higher at the weekend than they are during the week



The average number of cycle trips per week unsurprisingly follows a similar pattern to the average per day but is always between 20,000 and 30,000 except for January 2014 and February 2015 where they dip just below 20,000 and both Decembers when they both dip below 15,000.



And then monthly totals also follow the same pattern of being higher in the summer and lower in the winter. July 2014 is the highest figure here when nearly 130,000 cycle trips were made with December 2013 the lowest with just over 65,000 trips, the only month where the total number of cycle trips was below 70,000. In 2014, the only year with a full set of figures, the total number of trips was always above 100,000 a month from March to October and always below it from November to February.



Of the ten lowest daily totals it'll probably come as little surprise that Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years' Day all feature in the five lowest daily totals but I was also surprised to see a date in August there; Monday the 25th 2014, which was the date of the Summer Bank holiday. I also count myself as two of the cycle trips on Christmas day in both 2013 and 2014.

Ten lowest daily totals:

01/01/14	256
26/12/14	292
26/12/13	321
25/12/13	415
25/12/14	419
27/12/14	423
01/01/15	452
25/08/14	520
27/12/13	548
03/01/15	631

As for the ten highest daily totals Tuesday the 3rd of June 2014 is listed as the highest at 6,624 trips but this is significantly higher than any other day and the only time when more than 6,000 cycle trips have been counted in one day. I initially searched for any events that may have been happening that day, such as a bus strike, or exceptionally hot weather but could find nothing. It was the Hackney bike workshop alongside in Hackney City Farm that day but that happens twice per month so shouldn't skew the figures by that much. I then saw that the Hackney Cycling conference took place just four days later so thought perhaps there may have been some local rides by councillors, cycling activists or highway engineers to view cycle infrastructure in the local area that may have contributed to the sudden rise.  However I then noticed that the previous day, Monday 2nd June there were only 2,559 trips which is also exceptionally low for a weekday in June so have therefore concluded that this is an error with the counting software and some of the cycle trips from Monday were mistakenly counted on the Tuesday instead and Goldsmith's Row has still not seen over 6,000 trips in one day. Or I could be wrong of course and those two days are exceptional for no particular reason.

Ten highest daily totals:

03/06/14	6624
20/08/13	5825
21/08/13	5785
17/09/13	5778
29/04/14	5412
16/07/14	5411
22/07/14	5396
23/07/14	5325
10/06/14	5305
15/07/14	5290

From September 2014 to March 2015 we're also able to have year-on-year comparisons and can see that the total number of cycle trips per month increased in four of those months but decreased in three of them. However these are fairly small numbers so there hasn't really been any real significant increase or decrease in people cycling along here so far as I can see. At the end of next Summer I'll probably approach the council again for more up to date figures and if they oblige then we'll have three full years' worth of data which should give a much clearer indication of any significant changes in cycling numbers.

I can't really see how the number of people choosing to cycle here can increase significantly as whilst Goldsmith's Row is a lovely route to cycle along any serene cycling conditions simply end at Hackney Road when you're suddenly thrown into some of he worst cycling conditions possible in London, which I've written about before and continue to bang on about. There is a nice two way cycle track to the North of Hackney Road but it only runs for about the length of a swimming pool and links Goldsmith's Row up with Columbia Road so is no use if you're travelling along Hackney Road from Shoreditch to Cambridge Heath. Quite unbelievably in the draft "vision for Hackney" document for this area found on the Hackney cycling campaign website the call is for this cycle track to be removed and the land given over to Hackney City Farm!

Now I'm a big fan of Hackney City Farm and am there often, either there with my daughter mostly watching the pigs sleep or enjoying the food in the cafe, but it is insane to remove the only section of traffic free cycling from Hackney Road, turn it into #space4chickens and force people into cycling in primary position in front of lorries. Any measures like this will certainly not increase the amount of people cycling on Goldsmith's Row. The correct answer of what to do with this valuable piece of land is, of course, to use it for building cycle tracks on both sides of Hackney Road, with bus stop bypasses, as part of a plan to install segregated cycle lanes along the entire length of Hackney Road as loosely promised by Hackney Council last year. However I'm sick of waiting for this so I'll be switching my commute to Tower Hamlets and CS2 when it is finished next year, a longer but safer cycle route to work as I simply cannot stand ten more years of mixing it with lorries on Hackney Road.

Hackney Road

Hackney Road is exactly one mile long and runs from Shoreditch to Cambridge Heath along the southern edge of Hackney. According to Hackney council it is the second busiest cycle commuting route into Central London. I have cycled along it twice a day for around ten years and I absolutely hate it. It is without a doubt the worst part of my daily cycle commute.

Before I get on with sharing some pictures of the busiest cycle route from Hackney to the City why not virtually cycle it yourself in this five minute helmet cam clip of someone cycling almost the entire stretch westbound here during tube strike day. The traffic isn't always this bad but can quite often get this way during a "normal" rush hour as was exactly the case when I cycled along this very Wednesday morning due to the closure of Shoreditch High Street.

We'll start at the Shoreditch end of Hackney Road and for those heading into Central London coming to the end of Hackney Road you have two choices; head to Bishopsgate to the left where you have a very thin cycle lane



and an ASL awaiting you. However should you need to carry on to Old Street then you'll need to cross over two lanes of traffic to a junction where there is absolutely no cycle provision at all.



so should you want to leave Hackney Road, the second busiest cycle route into Central London, and continue your journey on towards Clerkenwell Road, the busiest cycle route in London, then you'll just have to mix it with traffic at these traffic lights



if you're cycling East then private hire cabs will be illegally parked up on the TFL red route or Hackney council double yellow lines on the corner pretty much 24/7, pushing you into the middle of the road. You can report it to TFL or Hackney Council if you like, it'll make no difference as neither of them will enforce it here.



passing Columbia Road the council have gone to the trouble of installing a "think bike" sign. You can see it here, just behind the tree on the left.



It would be nice if the council did! Continuing East we then head past our first Tesco on Hackney Road, which has car parking and a very large pavement which could easily accommodate a cycle track. To cycle East past here you pretty much have to cycle directly down the centre of the lane to stay out of the busy Tesco shopping door zone. I've seen many an angry driver here over the years and had plenty of close passes



we then pass the Fellowes Court estate, where again you have to take the lane here due to parking on both sides of the road



not to worry, this is Hackney so thankfully your young children can simply take the free cycle training on offer from the council and take the lane past here





we then continue on towards the junction of Queensbridge Road where there is again no room for a cycle track



and at the Queensbridge road lights the ASL has faded away so much it may as well not be there. Certainly most drivers don't notice it anyway.



Going the other direction towards Central London the ASL has again almost faded away entirely.



This is the spot where the LTDA recorded cyclists jumping red lights last year, choosing this specific spot on the second busiest cycle route into Central London as it was just a "normal" crossroads

once past Queensbridge Road you can then thankfully turn off onto the car free Goldsmith's Row assuming you don't get a puncture first that is



For those of us that don't want to head towards London Fields or Hackney Central we have to continue East into the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and on towards Cambridge Heath where the road is clearly not wide enough to accommodate a cycle track



leaving you at rush hour to either navigate your way through small gaps, like you're playing a buzz wire game, or cycle on the other side of the road



we then pass the RE hotel where Peter McGreal was killed by a lorry whilst cycling in 2011 just after this junction was "improved"



and just a mile and a hair raising five minute cycle later we're at the Eastern end of Hackney Road, where anyone heading towards Hackney Central would have probably already turned off onto Goldsmith's Row by this point so the vast majority are going to be travelling ahead towards Victoria Park. Meaning you have to navigate into the middle of three busy lanes of traffic to access the ASL

that is assuming you can actually get into the ASL in the first place

or heading west you get this beautifully smooth road



The road has been like this for years as Tower Hamlets simply can't afford to fix this during these times of austerity.

No plans exist for cycle tracks along Hackney Road from either Hackney or Tower Hamlets council and no one seems to be asking for it, with both of the local London cycling campaign groups choosing neighbouring roads to concentrate on their "ward asks" instead of what must be the busiest cycle route in their boroughs. Indeed a search through Hackney cycling campaigns website for Hackney Road produces very few results, one of the few I can find is this piece from 2002 where they refer to the old layout of Goldsmith's Row as having an "outdated segregationist approach"

Here's to ten more years of cycling along Hackney Road daily, dodging in an out of the primary position and constantly shoulder checking. Unless I'm with my daughter in which case, like most people travelling along here, we'll be in a car or on the bus.