Ride: The Smith Street cycleway under construction earlier this year – council data shows it’s becoming increasingly popular with cyclists. Picture: Robert Peet
The controversial pop-up bike path sparked opposition because it changed most of Smith Street into a one-way street.
Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery said the council had been collecting data on the number of people using the path since it was completed a few months ago.
“What we’ve found is that the number of cyclists using the Smith Street pop-up cycleway has increased over the past couple of months with a total of 1983 trips recorded in June and 4333 trips recorded in August,” Cr Bradbery said.
“It’s wonderful to see so many people use the stay-at-home orders to re-evaluate how they travel when making shorter trips around their community.”
Cr Bradbery said data will continue to be collected and reviewed if the pop-up path needs some fine-tuning.
“What we hope to see in the long-term, as we move out of lockdown, is people continuing to include active transport options such as cycling in their usual mix of exercise and travel,” he said.
“In the meantime, we’ll continue to collect data along Smith Street and at other places along the pop-up cycleway routes to build a clearer picture of how people use these new facilities.”
All data mentioned in this article was collected using MetroCount’s RidePod® BT system. An original article was published in the Illawarra Mercury Newspaper on 14 September 2021. Click here to read the original article.
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