Every year the County Council records the flow of motor vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians on all the bridges over the river Cam in Cambridge. These counts are usually carried out during April in school term but out of University term. We’ve sometimes reproduced some figures from the County Council’s ‘Traffic Monitoring’ report but, given the changes currently taking place, we thought it would be interesting to produce some more detailed figures from the counts conducted last year before the closure of Pye’s bridge (often known as Cutter Ferry bridge).
Hour | Totals | CF | FC | MLW | SS | GHL | BS | JLW | VA | FSG | P | EW | GD |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
07:00 | 805 | 41 | 60 | 16 | 47 | 34 | 163 | 115 | 82 | 50 | 55 | 142 | 145 |
08:00 | 2352 | 150 | 202 | 65 | 122 | 172 | 516 | 289 | 155 | 241 | 144 | 296 | 339 |
09:00 | 1944 | 65 | 185 | 102 | 161 | 199 | 398 | 210 | 146 | 172 | 96 | 210 | 178 |
10:00 | 1234 | 36 | 114 | 45 | 140 | 131 | 233 | 132 | 90 | 125 | 75 | 113 | 90 |
11:00 | 1073 | 22 | 77 | 45 | 147 | 103 | 206 | 133 | 98 | 86 | 64 | 92 | 90 |
12:00 | 1300 | 30 | 92 | 89 | 227 | 170 | 218 | 141 | 81 | 71 | 65 | 116 | 98 |
13:00 | 1493 | 37 | 123 | 86 | 212 | 211 | 250 | 165 | 104 | 127 | 51 | 127 | 135 |
14:00 | 1372 | 49 | 105 | 83 | 209 | 157 | 242 | 159 | 108 | 102 | 45 | 113 | 138 |
15:00 | 1529 | 46 | 125 | 95 | 183 | 177 | 228 | 198 | 131 | 142 | 77 | 127 | 125 |
16:00 | 1945 | 110 | 163 | 100 | 248 | 221 | 324 | 195 | 161 | 153 | 95 | 175 | 208 |
17:00 | 2385 | 83 | 194 | 125 | 195 | 202 | 510 | 299 | 194 | 230 | 93 | 260 | 310 |
18:00 | 1710 | 27 | 147 | 42 | 157 | 184 | 385 | 201 | 155 | 142 | 87 | 183 | 197 |
Totals | 19142 | 696 | 1587 | 893 | 2048 | 1961 | 3673 | 2237 | 1505 | 1641 | 947 | 1954 | 2053 |
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Thanks are due to the County Council, and to Graham Amis in particular, for supplying the data from which these tables and graphs were produced.
The original data also record whether cycles were being pushed or ridden.
Some 7,000 cyclists were using bridges where ‘no cycling’ notices were displayed, and some 4,000 cycles were being pushed. With changes now implemented at Fort St George and improvements proposed at other bridges, perhaps we can hope that fewer cyclists will need to have their trips disrupted by the need to dismount and push their bikes.
And yes, I know my headline says 20,000 and the total in the table is only 19,142, but as the counts only covered the hours between 7am and 7pm, I’m sure there would have been at least another 858 in the remaining 12 hours.
Jim Chisholm