Each fall, our dedicated volunteers and staff commit countless hours to ensure the Bicycle Coalition can accurately gather data. We conduct bike counts at 18 different locations across the city. In the coming weeks, we will be releasing our IBIKEPHL 2024 report. But before we delve into all the collected data, let’s take a closer look at the bike counts on the bridges over the Schuylkill River, from Spring Garden to South Street, which account for five of our 18 bike count locations. These bridges serve as our baseline, as our bike counts at these locations date back to 1991, when we first examined bike traffic before and after the opening of the Walnut Street Bridge.
Regarding the bridge data analysis, there was a slight decrease in the number of bicycles counted in 2023 (3,965) compared to 2024 (3,687), reflecting a 7% drop. This was the first decrease in bridge bike traffic since 2020.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was the sharp 20% decrease in e-scooter usage across the bridges, reversing a trend of double-digit increases in previous years. Overall micromobility traffic (bikes and scooters) decreased by 9% from 4,562 users in 2023 to 4,187 users in 2024.
On the bright side Indego bike share continues to make strong ridership gains. The number of Indego bikes crossing the bridges rose by 8% over 2023 and now make up 13% of the bike traffic. Late in January Indego released their 4th quarter statistics that shows continued growth in cycling activity across the city with more than 1.2 million trips taken in 2024—the most ever recorded—reflecting a notable increase from 1.08 million trips in 2023. The expansion of bike share stations, the addition of electric-assisted bikes and a new annual pass that includes 2 free e-bike trips daily have contributed to this rise in ridership.
As we continue to analyze the Bicycle Coalition’s 2024 annual bike count data, we’ll share our findings here. Keep an eye out for an upcoming post, rich with graphics, that will provide a detailed summary of our final conclusions.
If you’re interested in understanding the evolution of these counts and the methodology behind them, we invite you to explore the process in our Making of the Bicycle Coalition’s Manual Bike Counts storymap.
This article was co-written by Bicycle Coalition Policy Intern Elva Bofang Jiang.