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A bike counter is a nice way of saying, “Hey, the city values you for riding your bike”. It’s currently 1°C at 9:21 AM on January 10, 2011, in Copenhagen, Denmark. So far today, 2,142 people have biked past this counter (only in this direction, westbound). 43,504 have biked past in 2011 (again, westbound) and it’s only the 10th day of the year.
Marisa Paulson at The Northwest Passage* writes about last week’s public meeting for Park 567 at Milwaukee Avenue and Leavitt Avenue in Wicker Park. “Park 567” is a proposed access point for the Bloomingdale Trail. I really like what one of the project organizers said in response to respecting the history of Milwaukee Avenue (I guess very recent history).
Rich Kinczyk [project manager at the Trust for Public Land] said one possibility is adding a bike counter kiosk to track how many bikes are traveling through and that the kiosk could also display a map and information about the history of the area.
Milwaukee Avenue is the street with the highest recorded number of citizen cyclists. A bike counter would be a meaningful “small intervention” to show respect for bicycling as transportation in Chicago.
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Park 567 in May 2011.
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What the park looks like today.
*The Northwest Passage is a member of the Grid Chicago Network.
I will donate $50 to a bike counter
Why do *you* want a bike counter?
Oddly, I was just thinking yesterday about the bike counter shown in your photo. I think it would be a good way to add even more fun to biking.
Not to mention it doubles as a really good tool for measuring the level of biking all day long, every day of the year. It’s the measure of the ups and downs, and you can immediately see the effects of street modifications on that location (like if there was a construction project with a bike-unfriendly detour).