Thanks mikesbytes, I have emailed both the RMS & the City of Sydney. The RMS is currently looking into it & hope to get back to me next week. I have got an interesting response from the City of Sydney
Manager Cycling Strategy wrote:You are quite right to expect rider numbers to be similar due to their locations on a common route.
There are three factors which I think explain the difference. Firstly, the RMS figure is an annual figure and so is an average that includes winter months, whereas the City’s monthly figure is for March, a peak month. Secondly, a difference in what is being counted because the RMS figure is a daily average including weekends and the City figure is only counting weekdays (because we are primarily interested in commuting figures for their congestion relief benefits). Thirdly, the average 2012 figure doesn’t reflect the latest growth – cycling trips have more than doubled in the last three years, with a portion of that growth happening over the last year.
Would you agree these satisfactorily explain the difference? To assist further, I have included a graph of monthly totals on the Union Street cycleway that does include weekends, starting from last March (when counter data first became available) so that you can see the annual trend.
I haven't converted the graph to a jpg so I can attach it, but what the City of Sydney figures provided show is an annual figure of 421,571 bikes, giving an average of 1,154 per day - still way up on the RMS figure
rogan wrote:Riders are learning to bunny hop the cables?
Sadly I suspect the truth may be that the cycle count randomly detects cyclists, just like the traffic light loops