Bike Data
Measuring how many people ride bikes in the City.
By 2030, our goal is increasing bicycling fourfold. We collect and analyze data each year to understand our progress toward that goal.
Our long-term mobility plan, Go Boston 2030, envisions a city in a region where all residents have better and more equitable travel choices. We want efficient transportation networks that foster economic opportunity, where steps have been taken to prepare for climate change. The City of Boston is committed to making bike trips safe, comfortable, and convenient. This includes pursuing priority routes with bike lanes separated from moving vehicles and retrofitting neighborhood streets to slow traffic.
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Still have questions? Contact:
Boston Bikes
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1 City Hall Square, Room 721
Boston, MA 02201
About our data
Helping more people choose biking also helps us to respond to important trends and challenges that Boston is facing:
More people are moving to Boston, and more people are working in Boston. Convenient and safe bicycling helps to ease the pressure on our streets and transit system.
By supporting bicycling as a mode of transportation, we can give people a reliable, inexpensive way to reach educational opportunities and jobs.
More than a quarter of Boston’s greenhouse gas emissions are from transportation. Bicycling has a small impact on the environment and can help us reach our greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Annual Counts Data
Annual Bike Count Data
In 2016, we began a new annual bicycle count program using automated technology. We collect data at specific locations across the City a few times per year. The counted locations provide a representative sample of people biking. Over time, we can use this data to better understand how many people are already biking in Boston, and what we can do to encourage more people to go by bike.
Benefits of Automated Counts
We made the switch to automated bike counts so that we could capture more, and better, data.
To identify best practices, we:
- researched available technologies
- learned about potential drawbacks, and
- reviewed count programs in several sister cities.
With the annual automated counts program, we are improving the quality of our data by:
- collecting information about trips that happen outside of peak commuting hours
- diversifying the types of locations that we count
- standardizing the dates and hours of our counts, year-over-year, and
- ensuring that we do our counts, regardless of bad weather.
In June, we piloted 24 locations and used a variety of counting technologies. We used video technology to execute the full program in September.
In previous years, teams of volunteers counted the number of people they saw on bikes at a variety of locations. These counts took place during peak commute times on one of several days in September. While this information has been helpful, we knew it had real limitations:
- Counts weren’t always done during the same day of the year, and didn’t align year-over-year.
- We missed everyone who was biking outside the peak commute times.
- Our volunteers, as steadfast as they were, could not be at every location each year.
- We also didn’t want to send volunteers out in very poor weather.
How we plan to use our data
Better data helps us in looking back and assessing our progress in promoting bicycling in Boston. We can better answer questions such as:
- Has ridership changed on key routes?
- Have we encouraged more people to ride by building a more connected network?
- Has the presence of new bike share stations influenced bike-riding on nearby streets?
Better data helps us do better in planning and designing our bike network.
We’ll be able to develop factors to understand how many people are biking on certain types of routes in certain contexts. (“If X people bike on this street today, we can expect Y people to bike on a similar street today.”) We can begin to normalize other counts taken at other times of the year. (“If X people ride here on a colder morning in November, we can expect Y people to ride here on a warmer evening in June.”)
We may also be able to project how many people would ride on new routes or different facilities as those projects are being planned and designed. (“If we add a separated bike lane here, we can expect Z more people to bike on this route.”)
Bluebikes data
Bike share is public transportation by bike! The Bluebikes system is owned by the Cities of Boston, Cambridge, Everett, and Somerville, and the Town of Brookline. It now serves Arlington, Chelsea, Newton, Revere and Watertown as well.
Since the system launched in 2011, more than 13 million trips have been taken on Bluebikes. View data for people riding Bluebikes each month.
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Still have questions? Contact:
Boston Bikes
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1 City Hall Square, Room 721
Boston, MA 02201
