Here is the first of those posts.  This post is a general overview of the statistics about BikingToronto’s visitors in 2010.

The Overall Numbers

According to Google Analytics, over 155,000 people visited BikingToronto in 2010.

• This is a 115% increase over our 2009 numbers
• If you stacked all these people up, using the average height of Canadians (~1.7 metres), they would be as tall as 476 CN Towers, or 263.5 km
• This represents about 6% of the population of Toronto

Also according to Google, pages on BikingToronto were viewed over 415,000 times

• This is a 124% increase over our 2009 numbers
• That means a page was viewed on BikingToronto 1,136 times a day, on average

We had our highest number of visitors on Wed, Dec. 8, 2010 … when we racked up over 6,000 pageviews.  Our most popular post that day was our quick post about the Left-Wing Pinko I Bike T.O. Shirt, which by itself was viewed over 3,000 times on that one day.

Different stat programs give different numbers, of course.  We use Google Analytics as our standard because it is widely accepted as pretty accurate.  But, according to one stats program our 2010 numbers may be as high as:

• 172,000 people visited BikingToronto…
• Visiting us 577,000 times (3.35 times each)…
• Viewing 3,000,000+ pages (just over 5 pages each visit)
• Creating over 11,000,000 “hits” on BikingToronto

How Our Visitors Get Here

Our awesome viewers get here via many different places …. here are the top 10 from 2010:

1. facebook.com
2. twitter.com
3. google.com
4. reddit.com
5. google.ca
6. blogto.com
7. thestar.com
8. torontoist.com
9. toronto.ca
10. images.google.com

People look for biking information, and a lot of them come to BikingToronto via Google and other search engines.  Here are the top searches that brought people to BikingToronto:

1. biking toronto
2. bixi toronto
3. biking in toronto
4. duncans city ride
5. toronto bike lanes
6. queens park grand prix
7. biggest bike store toronto
8. cycling toronto
9. toronto biking
10. toronto cycling

Top Blogs in 2010

Did you know that BikingToronto has member blogs?  Be sure and check out all of them (they’re a great way to learn more about other people on the site) and here are the 5 most popular in 2010:

1. Duncan’s City Ride
2. Bikeroo in T.O.
3. Fletcher Five
4. Michael Holloway
5. Cyclops

Top Posts in 2010

Being Toronto’s largest and best site about cycling means that people come here when they need to know the news and advice about biking in Toronto.  Here are the 5 blog posts they looked at most in 2010:

Left-Wing Pinko I Bike T.O. Shirt

What do you do when Don Cherry gets up at Rob Ford’s investiture as Mayor and proceeds to label anyone on the left of the political spectrum or anyone who rides a bike as a “Pinko”?  Why, you take it in stride and have a laugh… and design t-shirts that proclaim your Pinko-ness (whether you are a pinko or not!)

10 Secrets to Cycling with Traffic: Part 1 of 10

This is the first part of 10 posts about cycling safely with traffic in Toronto.  All 10 posts were extremely popular, but most people started with the first tip (Drivers Don’t Want to Kill You) and worked their way through all 10.

2010 Toronto Cycling Map adds Bike Boxes

An excellent post by Duncan about the first sign of Bike Boxes coming to Toronto streets.  Duncan also writes an excellent blog here on the site – Duncan’s City Ride.

10 Secrets to Cycling with Traffic: Part 4 of 10

Another of our Cycling Secrets series… this one is “Avoid the Stoplight Squeeze” and gives some advice about how to stake out your own turf while waiting at a red light.

Rob Ford releases “Transportation Plan”

Squeaking into the Top 5 is Rob Ford’s Transportation Plan that he released via YouTube (yes, the video is in the post).  His transportation plan can be summed up in 10 words – “Cars good.  Cars go fast.  More cars is more good”.

They’ve released their numbers, and they are impressive:

• Between the hours of 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM on a typical weekday in September 2010, 19,162 cyclists entered Toronto’s downtown core, and 15,241 exited the core.

• The western screenline at Spadina Avenue had the highest bicycle volumes, carrying 45% of all cyclists travelling to and from the core.

• The majority (62%) of cyclists were male, wore a helmet (54%), and rode on the street rather than on the sidewalk (95%). Very few (0.32%) of counted cyclists were passengers (e.g. in a child seat or trailer).

This is a great release of information and if the City can continue to undertake these cyclist counting initiatives, it can address anti-bike infrastructure sentiment with cold, hard, statistical facts.

• Read the Summary Leaflet (PDF)
• View the Full Report (PDF)

Here at BikingToronto we decided to take it one step further and figure out (Google Doc) exactly who were the bike-friendliest Councillors in terms of Council voting (and who were the most bike-UNfriendliest).

The chart below takes all the voting records in the Bike Union document and gave Councillors +1 point when they made a bike-friendly vote and -1 point when they either made a bike-UNfriendly vote or didn’t bother to show up to vote.

Now we can all see, quickly and easily, who is the friendliest and who is the unfriendliest.

• Click here to view it full size
  
• Download it in PDF format.
• View the Google Doc where we recorded all the votes

The Bloor Viaduct is one of the perfect places in Toronto to do this, as it is what I like to call a “funnel point” over the Don Valley… it’s one of very few places that someone biking to work can cross the valley… and it’s a 3 km ride north (Millwood) or almost 2 km south (Gerrard) to get to the next bridge.

As you can see by the graph above, the 2 hours between 7:15 – 9:15 am sees a lot of cyclists heading over the Viaduct westbound towards downtown Toronto.    A total of 582 cyclists passed me in those 120 minutes (an avg. of 4.85 per minute) with the highest number between approx. 8:20 to after 9:00 am.

Now some photos I took while I sat in my lovely tree-shaded spot, watching commuters go by:

I first sat on a round concrete bench close to the Bloor / Castle Frank intersection, but the trees and grass were calling me...

ahh, trees and shade, and me with a notepad.

Line-ups are common at the Bloor & Castle Frank intersection.

Recumbent riders join the fun too.

Okay, okay… you talked me into it.  Here are a couple short videos of people biking through the intersection on their way to work.

What are other “funnel points” for bikers in Toronto? Popular ways under the 401? Over the Humber valley? Across railway crossings?

I just wanted to post quickly to let you know that since re-launching BikingToronto in early January we’ve had 100 people register on the site as members!!!

Pretty good for just 2 months, I have to say.  Those were winter months too.

If you are one of those 100 people, then thank you and welcome to the site.  You are posting and discussing and biking and making the site better.

The new “sociable”, interactive and just plain better BikingToronto was planned to take the collection of Toronto Cycling info to the next level – and that level is YOU.   Whether “you” are a commuting, racing, touring or recreational cyclist, or whether you are involved in a bike organization or a bike store or supplier – what you think and how you interact with others is important.

If you’re not a BikingToronto member yet, you can register here (don’t worry, it’s free, quick and easy!).

You can also check out our Site Guide if you’re curious about the features BikingToronto has brought to Toronto cyclists to connect.

At any time, feel free to shoot me an email at joe@bikingtoronto.com if you have any questions (or just want to chat).

Now our gut feelings have the hard data to match!  The City of Toronto has just released the results of a 2009 study with questions that matched those in a 1999 study (asking the same questions is *essential* for any meaningful trend analysis when working with stats):

The survey, conducted in 2009 by Ipsos Reid, found that more Toronto residents were cycling to school and work than 10 years ago. A total of 16 per cent said they used their bicycles to commute to work or school, up from 11 per cent in 1999. And many of those who commute by bike are riding more days a week than in the past.

In addition to there being more people on bikes, the survey has also indicated (as so many other surveys about cycling have in the past) that cycling infrastructure that improves safety and bicycle parking facilities are the most important wished-for items from Toronto’s cyclists:

Investments in the cycling infrastructure over the past 10 years are being recognized and the survey reveals that 72 per cent of Torontonians believe that the overall quality of cycling routes and facilities has improved compared to 1999. However, cyclists and non-cyclists alike agree that having more bike lanes on streets would have the greatest impact on improving cycling in the city. In fact, 66 per cent of non-cyclists, 77 per cent of utilitarian cyclists and 68 per cent of recreational cyclists believe that separated bike lanes on city streets would greatly improve cycling in Toronto.

In addition to a comprehensive cycling network, the importance of bicycle parking facilities is also articulated. The survey showed that secure bicycle parking at transit stations has the potential to increase combined cycling and transit trips. One third of cyclists reported combining biking and public transportation sometimes. The majority of these cyclists (74 per cent of utilitarian and 66 per cent of recreational cyclists) say they would combine cycling and public transit more often if secure bicycle parking was provided at subway stations.

You can read more about the results on the City of Toronto’s webpage.

Key Findings from the 2009 City of Toronto Cycling Survey (PDF)
http://www.toronto.ca/cycling/reports/pdf/2010-survey-backgrounder.pdf

Full Survey Results and Comparison between 1999 and 2009 (PDF)
http://www.toronto.ca/cycling/reports/pdf/cycling_study_1999_and_2009.pdf

Patrick Cain at the Toronto Star loves maps (who doesn’t?). He’s done a couple general commuting maps for the GTA, but has just released one just about Commuter Cyclists, organized by Census Tracts.

The map looks pretty much like you’d expect… higher levels of people using bicycles as their primary mode of getting to work in the downtown core (where car traffic moves slower and there are more bikelanes) and less and less as you move into the old boroughs of Toronto and the suburbs.

However, and you can see this in the screenshot above… some areas of Toronto are not only “hotbeds” of commuting by bike, but the census data also shows how many people identified “walking” and “transit” as their primary means of getting to work.

In particular, the area immediately west of the University of Toronto (which a workforce of 1815 people) is not only high in bike commuters (17%, or ~300 people), but also in those who walk to work (32%, or 580 people) and transit users (also 32%, or 580).

That leaves 19% of this census tract who get to work via automobile… just slightly more than by bike, and less than by walking or transit.

It’s good to think about things like this in an election year.

It’s nice to see so many people commuting by bike in Toronto’s core.

• Link to Map
• Article about Map
• BikingToronto Maps Page (has links to Patrick’s previous maps)
• Discussion in the Commuting Group