2016 Bike to Work Day: Bikes vs Cars count on the Penn Ave Bike Lane

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1 bike for every 3 cars on this year’s Penn Ave Bike to Work Day Count, peaking at 31% of all traffic

The Penn Ave bike lanes are the most studied bike lanes in the City of Pittsburgh’s history.

Last year, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership installed real-time bike lane counters in three locations on the Penn bike lanes, between 6th St and 16th St. The high numbers shown by these counters have mostly quieted the sceptic commentators, we were also curious about what those numbers mean in context to the number of motorized vehicles also using Penn Ave.

During Bike to Work Day last year we sat at the corner of Penn Ave and 10th to count the number of total vehicles traveling along Penn Ave. Much to the surprise of even ourselves, we found that about 26% of all traffic during the morning commute were people on bicycles, or roughly 1 bike for every 3 motorized vehicles.

Well, we are happy to report on the Bike to Work Day 2016 morning rush hour commute.

From 7:30am-9:30am bikes were 26% of all traffic!
– 207 bikes, 584 motor vehicles (791 total vehicles)
– 1 bike for every 2.8 motorized vehicles

Peak time for trips made by people on bikes was 8:15am-9:15am:
– 121 bikes, 267 motorized vehicles
Bikes accounted for 31% of all vehicles from 8:15-9:15
– 1 bike for every 2.2 cars

For the sake of this, bikes are included when we say “vehicles” and (obviously) not when we say “motorized vehicles.”


Proposed Negley Ave bike lane meeting on Thursday, May 26th, 6-7PM. Do something big to end bike month: show up to demonstrate your support for making our streets safer to bike & walk. This upcoming public meeting will determine the future of this important project so please show your support!

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