Sometimes, if I'm awake enough in the morning to concentrate on biking to work safely AND other things, I try to count the number of other cyclists I see on the roads with me.

This is a much easier task in the winter, as it ranged from 5-10 cyclists, most mornings. The warm weather makes things more difficult though, plus I'm moving, so it's not like I'm at a fixed point watching cyclists go by (although, that is a cool idea... maybe something I'll try on Gerrard just west of the bridge over the Don River...).

This morning I counted 42 other cyclists out there on my 7 km (4.5 mile), 20 minute journey, and considering I bike in to downtown pretty early (in the 7:30 - 8:00 am range), I think that's pretty good. I'm almost positive that things get busier the closer to 9 am it gets.

I crossed the street to get my Tim Horton's fix a little before 9 am this morning, and the two minutes it took me to cross the street twice, I saw a whopping 26 cyclists go through the intersection.

I would love to find some City of Toronto resources on cycling statistics. I suspect they do counts of cyclists to figure out how many people are biking Toronto from year to year, but I haven't been able to track anything down yet. Oh, I just remembered that Tino gave me some contact info for someone at City Hall a while back... I'll have to see if I can hunt down that info.

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