Raise the Hammer

Some silly person in the other thread did not believe me that there was a moment bikes on Cannon actually outnumbered cars. I am reposting a reformatted version of my reply, here, as it's more relevant here, to get my point across here, as well.

Yes, rare moment, but it did happen.

Here's video proof...

Youtube Video: More bikes than cars on Cannon (10:48pm, Tues July 14th, 2015)

Certainly was a quiet night for cars, mind you, but you get my point -- moments like these now exist (finally). I should have let the camera run for the whole run, but it was consistent for the full length as I rode from James Street towards Sherman Avenue (in the opposite direction of the people exiting a PanAm event).

As a fellow car-owner and driver, I want to point out the obvious, because of stoplight signalling and 1-way nature of Cannon, cars clump into platoons while bikes do not. Also, in addition, you cannot drive a car westwards on Cannon, and when driving eastwards, you're usually stuck inside a platoon cycle of cars so it looks denser than it really is (when offpeak, 80-90% of the space between platoons can become empty).

The car platoons are often more than 5-7 blocks apart in some sections -- and the low-density bikes on a 5-to-7-block-span can sometimes outnumber a dense half-block-long offpeak car platoon. A single bike in one block, zero bikes for one block, four clustered bikes next block, one bike next block, then a cluster of two bikes, then zero bikes for a block, then a surge of 5 bikes next block.

It's sporadic and low density. But car platoons are often 10cars-0cars-0cars-0cars-0cars-0cars-0cars for a multi-block span during the rare really low-car-traffic quiet moments. Massive emptiness between Cannon car platoons when locomoting yourself westwards (foot or bike) on Cannon. Especially offpeak.

It looks crowded when you're boxed in the middle of a 10-car offpeak Cannon car platoon, three cars ahead in all lanes, a car to your left/right, and four cars behind you in all lanes.

As it stands now, I drive Cannon versus bike Cannon 50%:50% ratio which gives me good standing for bike-versus-cars judgements, and while I agree cars on a daily basis outnumber bikes as a Grand Daily Total, this isn't true for select half-hour periods on specific days on select exact moments of specific months.

If you drive Cannon once a day including weekends (10mins out of 24hours), you still have a >95% chance of missing these special event-surge-assisted occasional Cannon bike moments where for a full solid moment like 15-minutes to 30-minutes, total bike can traffic (and just did 22h48/2015-07-14) outnumber car traffic.

Yes, it is still a rare moment at this time.

Yes, it was biased by a stadium-finish moment.

Yes, during stronger-than-usual PanAm stadium parking restrictions.

But yes it happened -- total bikes exceeded total cars when riding bike contra-direction (after stadium event finish) from James-to-Sherman.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-07-30 15:37:33