LexRides

[sailorjames]

There are meetings scheduled to get a prep course on what to look for, one is already passed and was yesterday (9/25). The next is tomorrow morning (9/27) at 10AM, the location is Third Street Stuff. I'm afraid those not on facebook may not have gotten this info.

If you can't make these meetings though, i believe you can show up for your shift a good bit earlier than scheduled to get a little onsite coaching.

Something makes me think this bike watching is grounds for a drinking game...

[brokebike]

yeah... I don't do facebook or myspace. I'm surprised there wasn't any follow up back here with the meeting info, seeing as how there was a call-out for volunteers posted, and several folks had agreed to do it.

Is the project not hard up for volunteers anymore?
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[sailorjames]

Last message sent to me via facebook:

Hey again everyone! I apologize for sending this message to everybody, but this needs to reach as many people as possible...

After all of your commitments to help with the bike study this coming Tuesday, we are only three volunteers short of having a full roster of volunteers. Unfortunately, we need all three volunteers for the same time slot.

If you are available from 1-3pm on Tuesday, 9/30, please please please volunteer to help with the bike study. some of you have already committed to help at other times, and some of you haven't - but anyone who has not already helped and is interested in working from 1-3pm...PLEASE HELP US! if you've committed for another shift, but would be available from 1-3pm, let me know and we can perhaps mess with the schedule since we have extra volunteers at some times and not enough at others.

if you can help from 1-3pm and haven't already let me know, let me know soon! the final training session for the study will be tomorrow (Saturday) morning @ 10am at Third Street Stuff and Coffee. if you can help but can't make the training, let me know!

[brokebike]

thanks for posting that here, James.
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[mcrib]

looks like Taylor wrote an article for the Kernal about his study on tuesday.
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Albert Einstein trembled when he found out time was water. Seeping through the rafters to put out this burning world.

[brokebike]

I did two shifts today and saw probably as many *silly-ass scooters as I did bikes.

*scooter peeps - you know what I mean, so take no offense.
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[roller]

There were some scooters, but I counted shitloads of bikes, but not many helmets.

Be curious to see how today compares to a decade ago. Is that the pizza party? Number crunching and pizza munching with the volunteers?

[sailorjames]

When I left euclid/rose at 5:15 the count was up to 760, at that rate it has doubled the highest count from 10 years ago, about 90% of riders weren't wearing helmets, and a lot of cyclists choose not to use the left turn lanes, and instead use the crosswalks.

[taylor]

hey folks- thanks to all of you who helped out with the study - we couldn't have done it without all of you. we haven't done much number crunching yet, but it's looking good so far.

1998 bike totals: 3572
2008 bike totals: 4882

just so you don't have to think about the math, that's a 1310 difference in bike trips, and a 36.67% increase in total trips. as the Kernel astutely pointed out today, enrollment has only increased 9% since 1998 - so there is nothing to account for the increase in bicycling except for its practicality, environmental benefits and monetary savings - plus the fact it's just that fucking cool to ride a bike these days.

all in all the study was a resounding success - if you would have asked me two weeks ago if it would have went this well I would have said hell no - we didn't even have half of the volunteers we needed a couple weeks ago. everyone came up big. 61 volunteers, 14 checkpoints and nearly 5000 bikes. a resounding success, indeed.

p.s.- it's another Taylor that wrote the articles for the Kernel, I'm the Taylor that's quoted in them.

[brokebike]

I enjoyed taking part in it. Thanks to the organizers who brought us chairs and water, and kept checking in to see if we needed anything.
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[roller]

Hey Taylor,

Great study and I appreciate the numbers. I suspect this will have a significant impact on future bike planning at UK and perhaps in Lex as a whole.

Had a question about the methodology. Did you guys control for the volunteers? I rode to my station and probably trigged 3 counts there and 3 counts back. If every volunteer rode a bike and triggered 6 counts each, that's an estimated 366 counts generated by the study alone. Whether or not these biking volunteers would have been on campus anyway would have to be an assumption, unless you asked each.

[brokebike]

I say, if the numbers were skewed a bit toward more bikes rather than less, it would be beneficial, right?
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[elzie5000]

As long as the number of volunteer data collectors was about the same in the previous study it shouldn't make much difference.

If some pirate had ridden around campus all day just to inflate the numbers, that would be a different story.

[iridetoobs]

you called me out...argh!

[brokebike]

I didn't see any pirates, but there was some jackass UK PPD worker driving around in a van harassing the volunteers. He looked an awful lot like Henry Huffines.
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