Paul's 'Wheeling and Walking' blog - Active Transportation

Hello! If you’re reading this, you’re hopefully one of the many people who responded to our survey to tell Bike Cochrane that your #1 issue for us to advocate is ‘Improving Connectivity in Cochrane for Wheeling and Walking’!

Today, I wanted to share with our members some of the research your Active Transportation Committee has been doing around intersections in town. See below a clip of Strava Metro’s user data for the intersection of highway 22 and Fireside/James Walker Trail. Note that Strava (a self-recorded app for phones and wearable devices to track runners, cyclists, walkers) has opened their data set to Bike Cochrane to assist us in our efforts to advocate for improvements in cycling infrastructure. It will be supplemented with our planned traffic studies this summer using old-fashioned clipboards along with bike counter sensors, but for now it’s useful as a data set to set how our cyclists and walking traffic has increased dramatically (in the case below by 78% year over year from 2019 to 2020).

This data set helped Bike Cochrane push Alberta Transportation to prioritize re-painting this and other intersections ASAP in early 2021. It is also helping inform our project prioritizations with the Town of Cochrane and other stakeholders.

If you’re interested in this kind of data, and in advocating for safer cycling connectivity in Cochrane, please reach out to Paul@bikecochrane.com, and please fill in our Active Transportation Survey