Results of the City's bicycle and pedestrian counts from 2010-2016

New and updating bicycle and pedestrian counts are available at https://data.somervillema.gov/resource/6j4n-batb and https://data.somervillema.gov/resource/3ms3-ngki, respectively.

The annual bike and pedestrian count is a volunteer data collection effort each fall that helps the City understand where and how many people are biking and walking in Somerville, and how those numbers are changing over time. This program has been taking place each year since 2010.

Counts are collected Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday for one hour in the morning and evening using a “screen line” method, whereby cyclists and pedestrians are counted as they pass by an imaginary line across the street and sidewalks. Morning count sessions begin between 7:15 and 7:45 am, and evening count sessions begin between 4:45 and 5:15 pm. Counts are collected for four movements at each location: two screen lines, counting cyclists and pedestrians traveling in both directions. See an example location below.

Bike counts capture the number of people riding bicycles, so an adult and child riding on the same bike would be counted as two counts even though it is only one bike. Pedestrian counts capture people walking or jogging, people using a wheelchair or assistive device, children in strollers, and people using other micro-mobility devices, such as skateboards, scooters, or roller skates.

While the City and its amazing volunteers do their best to collect accurate and complete data each year and the City does quality control to catch clear errors, it is not possible to ensure 100% accuracy of the data and not all locations have been counted every year of the program. There are also several external factors impacting counts that are not consistent year-to-year, such as nearby construction and weather. For these reasons, the counts are intended to be used to observe high-level trends across the city and at count locations, and not to extrapolate that biking and walking in Somerville has changed by a specific percentage or number.

We invite you to use the data to conduct your own analyses. Data shared here are summed at the location level for each year. If you would like to request more granular data at the movement level, please send your request to transportation@somervillema.gov.

Somerville Public Schools partnered with the City’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development to launch the Somerville Public Schools Workforce Transit Pass Pilot Program for Spring 2023. This program was funded thanks to the American Rescue Plan Act. The pilot program provided free MBTA LinkPasses to all SPS staff who signed up. Passes were good 7 days a week for unlimited travel on all MBTA subway lines, local bus lines, and the Silver Line. The goal of the pilot was to support staff, promote sustainable transit, ease parking pressure around schools, and evaluate use and interest in transit passes. This dataset includes anonymized travel data provided by the MBTA combined with select survey responses from the pilot intake survey.