Five years of the Goldsmith's Row cycle counter

August 2018 marked five 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

2017 to 2018 was a tale of two halves, separated by a malfunction. The end of 2017 continued as the previous months had - a significant lower number of people cycling along Goldsmith's Row. Fewer than 100,000 cycled along here in September 2017, the first time it had dipped below 100k in any September and down from over 122k in September 2014. October was another record low and November was down on last year but still the second highest number of users in any of the five November's so far. December saw just over 56,000 bicycle trips, down from over 74,000 in December 2015 and setting a new low record as the first time less than 60,000 bicycle trips have been recorded in any calendar month.

2018 began in much the same fashion with the lowest number of bicycle trips in any January and the first January to see less than 80,000 trips. February saw just over 70,000, down over 10% on the year and down from a record 87,000 in February 2016. The "beast from the East" hit the UK at the end of February

And CS2 today pic.twitter.com/sleHGJdgxT

— Hackney Cyclist (@Hackneycyclist) 28 February 2018

and this was reflected with less than 1000 cycle trips on February 28th (when the average weekday number would normally be over 3,000) and then just 542 cycle trips on March 1st. The cold weather must have affected the sensor buried in the roadway as the cycle counter then stopped working for over a month and a half, which unfortunately means I will have to completely remove March and April from this years' count.

This coldwave was followed by a heatwave and the figures for the rest of the year reflect this warm weather. May saw 109k trips, the second highest May total, June saw 115k (third highest June), July had 125k trips (up over 13% on last year and second highest month of all time) and August saw 106k trips.

There is no change to the highest daily totals with no days in the past 12 months making the top ten, which is surprising given the very hot weather we experienced:

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

although we do now have a new record low with just 251 cycle trips made on Boxing Day last year. Christmas Day 2017 also just made the top ten lowest totals with 372 cycle trips:

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 25/12/16 369 25/12/17 372

The grand total for the year is also a record low of just over 1 million trips, however this is with almost two months of missing data and so is not an accurate figure. The same applies for the total number of cycle trips for the five year period, which officially stands at 5,861,429 but is likely to be close to 6 million.

Hopefully the sensors will continue to work for the next 12 months so we can see if the decrease in numbers or people cycling along Goldsmith's row is a blip or a long term trend.

Chart created by Al?