I recently posted about some Bixi data our group analysed at the Hack/Reduce Montreal 2 event. One of the observations I made was that it seemed as though the evening rush was generally stronger than the morning rush. This seemed to be true at least for the week of April 11th to 14th. I even speculated that this was because riding home might be a great way to relax after work. Reader Joey Berger contacted me with an alternative take on this:
You were surprised (as I was) by this, in part I think because downtown is downhill for a lot of Bixi users. When I used to commute downtown I always rode in the morning and took the bus in the evening.
Anyway, I got curious so I looked up some Environment Canada data.
As you can see, there wasn’t much rain to affect bike use, but April mornings are a lot cooler than April evenings. I suspect two things. First, below about 12 degrees, riding a Bixi isn’t as comfortable as it needs to be for mass use. Especially if it’s windy and you don’t have gloves on. Second, I assume there’s a lot more downtown traffic in the evening, especially among pedestrians/bikers who are both commuting from work and entering downtown for dinner, movies, etc.
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Keep the comments coming and check back here for an analysis of Bixi traffic during the STM outage on Thursday morning.
bayesianbiologist 
