KOLD News 13 live, local and late breaking-3 Day Bike Count
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Mark Stine KOLD News 13 Reporter
Live - Local - Late Breaking
"It's not too bad. It's pretty safe. We have enough bikes around so cars are pretty much used to it."
Curtis Reinbold and Keith Schubert have been riding their bikes to and from work for the last 20 years.
"It's gotten a lot better in the last few years, than when we first started," Reinbold said.
When they began, they say a ride was more of a challenge than a calm commute.
Schubert explained, "We'd have people throwing insults or throwing water or some other debris from their vehicles or honking."
But since then, more bike lanes have been added to local roads and more intersections have features for bicycles.
"We've got a lot of bike facilities already in place in the region," Gabe Thum with Pima Association of Governments said.
To make the Tucson and Pima County even better equipped to handle bicycles, Pima Association of Governments is counting bikes.
"We want to be a pro bike community as bicycle friendly as we can and we can't really do that unless we're measuring what we value and we value cycling," Thum told KOLD.
From Tuesday until Thursday, P.A.G. will be counting cyclists during the morning and evening commute at 40 intersections around town.
They'll be counting the actual number of riders, if the cyclist is male or female and if they're riding in a safe manner.
Thum said, "Once we do this for a number of years we'll be able to look at the trends over time and see how the numbers are changing."
They'll also be looking for intersections needing improvements. "If we notice there are a lot of cyclists using a particular roadway and there is no bike facility there, that might play a role in us planning for a new bike facility," Thum explained.
Heading home for the evening, Curtis and Keith say they're for the count and hope it makes the area bike friendlier in the future.
"The better we can make it for people to ride their bicycles that'd be great," Curtis said.
