One million cyclists in Cambridge have passed Parker's Piece bike counter this year
14 Dec 2016
One million cyclists have ridden past the cycle counter in Parker's Piece since January, breaking the all-time record.
Roxanne de-Beaux, of the Cambridge Cycling Campaign, said last year the total had fallen frustratingly short, coming in 50,000 under the million mark.
Cllr Noel Kavanagh, cycling champion at Cambridgeshire County Council, said the number was brilliant news, but not a total surprise.
"I am not surprised," he said. "I cycle through it several times and have noticed the total going up. Most days, it is two or three thousand. I think this is really good.”
The counter was put in place in 2014, in part to commemorate the historic start of the 2014 Tour de France in the city.
Here are some of the comments under the article:
Commenter 1:
Interesting to note that a person who uses their car exclusively probably pays less per mile in VED, than a car owning cyclist... in other words, a car owning cyclist pays more "road tax" per mile than average Joe Car.
Commenter 2:
"a car owning cyclist pays more" - interesting, I never thought of it like that.
Commenter 1:
I have a car and a bicycle. I do ~2000 miles in my car (I cycle most places within 5 miles) and pay ~£220 VED, thus pay ~##p per mile.
The average car does around 8000 per year, with an average VED of £166, so ~##p per mile. (source for averages... Google).
So, thus as mainly a cyclist in town, I pay a lot more road tax per mile than most car drivers. Given, there are a lot of caveats to this.
The comments under a Cambridge News article that involve bikes often turn into a cyclist vs driver argument. This little exchange between two commenters involves some nice Core Maths skills!
Possible questions:
1) What does the headline mean?
2) How many bikes pass this point per day? What are the difficulties with carrying out this sort of calculation?
3) What will the counter read at the end of the year?
4) What is the percentage increase from last year?
5) Is the councillor correct with his statements?
6) VED is “vehicle excise duty” – commonly referred to as “car tax” or “road tax”. The symbol ~ means “approximately”. What are the numbers I have blanked out in the comments?
Answers:
1) It doesn’t mean that there were a million cyclists. Just that a bike has been read by the sensor a million times. One person cycling past it twice each day would contribute 365 x 2 of these, for example.
2) There are 31-13 = 18 days to go until the end of the year. This was a leap year, so there have been 366-18 = 348 days. 1 million divided by 348 = 2874 per day.
I have no idea whether more people cycle during the week (getting to work), or at the weekend (because they have time to do so). Maybe best to say it is between 2500 and 3000 per day?
We also don’t know when the figure of a million was reached (we only have the date of the article to go on.)
3) What will the counter read at the end of the year? Again, we don’t know whether more people cycle close to Christmas (for leisure reasons, coming back from Christmas parties, etc), or fewer (they drive because they won’t fit the presents they buy in their basket, they are away visiting relatives, etc. If we go for 2500 per day between now and the end of the year then that would be an additional 45000.
4) What is the percentage increase from last year? 1,045,000 this year compared to 950,000 last year. Dividing these gives 1.1, which means a 10% increase.
5) Is the councillor correct with his statements? “have noticed the total going up” – yes- that is correct (!). “Two or three thousand” is right too.
6) ~11p compared to ~2p.
Source: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/record-breaking-one-million-cyclists-12321840
Possible questions:
1) What does the headline mean?
2) How many bikes pass this point per day? What are the difficulties with carrying out this sort of calculation?
3) What will the counter read at the end of the year?
4) What is the percentage increase from last year?
5) Is the councillor correct with his statements?
6) VED is “vehicle excise duty” – commonly referred to as “car tax” or “road tax”. The symbol ~ means “approximately”. What are the numbers I have blanked out in the comments?
Answers:
1) It doesn’t mean that there were a million cyclists. Just that a bike has been read by the sensor a million times. One person cycling past it twice each day would contribute 365 x 2 of these, for example.
2) There are 31-13 = 18 days to go until the end of the year. This was a leap year, so there have been 366-18 = 348 days. 1 million divided by 348 = 2874 per day.
I have no idea whether more people cycle during the week (getting to work), or at the weekend (because they have time to do so). Maybe best to say it is between 2500 and 3000 per day?
We also don’t know when the figure of a million was reached (we only have the date of the article to go on.)
3) What will the counter read at the end of the year? Again, we don’t know whether more people cycle close to Christmas (for leisure reasons, coming back from Christmas parties, etc), or fewer (they drive because they won’t fit the presents they buy in their basket, they are away visiting relatives, etc. If we go for 2500 per day between now and the end of the year then that would be an additional 45000.
4) What is the percentage increase from last year? 1,045,000 this year compared to 950,000 last year. Dividing these gives 1.1, which means a 10% increase.
5) Is the councillor correct with his statements? “have noticed the total going up” – yes- that is correct (!). “Two or three thousand” is right too.
6) ~11p compared to ~2p.
Source: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/record-breaking-one-million-cyclists-12321840
