A bicycle barometer is slated to go up on San Francisco’s Market Street next month to count the number of bicycles that travel through the city’s arterial boulevard.
The measuring device will be built on the south side of Market Street between Ninth and 10th streets after the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors unanimously approved a $20,000 donation from the SF Bicycle Coalition at Tuesday’s board meeting.
The donated funds will go toward the roughly $70,000 total project cost for the building and installation of the machine.
The counter aims to encourage commuters and others to use bicycles as a mode of transportation by keeping track of ridership and noticeably displaying the number of riders.
The barometer would be the city’s first and is estimated to tally as many as 1 million eastbound bicyclists that are projected to increasingly traverse on Market Street each year, according to Muni officials.
The latest annual bicycle volumes on the Market Street thoroughfare are recorded at about 600,000 riders, Muni officials said.
Elsewhere
Bicycle Traffic Counter Could Come to Market Street by Bike to Work Day [Streetsblog]
The barometer will stand 7.5 feet tall and 1.5 feet wide with a digital display counter that will tally the number of passing bicyclists through an embedded counter underneath the bike lane.
To build and install the counter, transit staff is working with the city’s Department of Technology and the Department of Public Works.
Muni spokesman Paul Rose said the barometer is scheduled to be up and running by the end of May, however Muni officials are hoping the counter will be up before Bike to Work Day on May 9.
Sasha Lekach, Bay City News
