This past Wednesday and Thursday AM I volunteered to help Transit For Liveable Commuities conduct their annual bike/ped census of Minneapolis and St. Paul. I was stationed at the intersection of the SW LRT Trail, a popular MUT that connects up to downtown Minneapolis, and is an extension of the Minneapolis Midtown Greenway (a bike path) and Beltline Blvd, a four lane roadway that is a popular north south connector for the internal combustion crowd across some RR tracks.

I counted cyclist and pedestrians from 7:00am to 9:00am.
Here's the results in summary:
9-May
Cyclists 142
Helmets 70.06%
Male 68.15%
Female 22.29%
Peds 14
Skaters 1

10-May
Cyclists 126
Helmets 58.78%
Male 65.54%
Female 19.59%
Peds 22
Skaters 0

Here's my impromptu counting station and the tools of the trade.

opps...mispelled Census in the post title...can't edit that, so now I look like a dummy, sorry :)

Here's some shots of my intersection.
1) the trail Eastbound from my spot
2) the trail Westbound from my spot.
The vast majority of my traffic was East and West bound. Almost no Cyclist or Peds went through North/South.

A few of my counted comrades:

That is quite interesting. I wonder if I counted the 2 hour use of the Mt Vernon Trail in the afternoon it could easily reach a few thousand users (and the trail is at best no better than the one you counted).

That is quite interesting. I wonder if I counted the 2 hour use of the Mt Vernon Trail in the afternoon it could easily reach a few thousand users (and the trail is at best no better than the one you counted).

With my AM duty in mind on the ride home, it was clear that the PM counters had a much busier time than me. Most of the riders I saw I would judge to be transportational cyclists going to work. There were a few recreational riders in the mix, but most were carrying gear, many had lights, fenders, junk bike that you wouldn't mind leaving on the street all day, and didn't come back from the other direction later in my shift. With that in mind I paid attention to who was riding in the 4-6 pm time slot as I was going home. First, there was allot more riders out, and second, most I judged to be recreationalist who drove home and went out for a ride on the nice bike, sans a lock, no lights, and carry nothing but water. I wouldn't be surprised if my intersection more than doubled for the afternoon. 4-6 count.

We're about 2 million people in the metro area, you're about 10 million in DC or so, right? So in theory you should have 5 times our numbers. I've seen us in a few studies showing us at @2% of all trips are by bicycle. Measured that way, we are consistently in the top 5 in the nation. By trip count, we don't approach much bigger cities liked DC, Chicago, LA, etc.

Does DC do a bike census?

Scot