As Fuzz mentioned, counts are only part of the picture. The cycle track pilot is being evaluated on several variables of which only one of those is the actual usage. (They're looking to show items like; more seniors, females, children riding, significantly less sidewalk riding, acceptable or even better travel times in other travel lanes[1], number of collisions, and more) - you can see them at
http://agendaminutes.calgary.ca/sire...s&itemid=34439 (including the explanation of the different riding expectations - which are multiples of the number of users seen in September 2014. The lower ones are also impacted by construction for the length of the pilot - eg. 12th Ave at 3rd St.)
The other reason to not focus solely on the counts is that it takes on average 3 years for a community to get used to a major change in transportation, while the pilot is only for 16 months to establish whether the pilot should be continued, made permanent, scrapped entirely, or some mix of all 3.
Otherwise counters are tripped every time a bike goes over the counter. Some of the graphs are a little confusing because by default the pedestrians and bike counts are merged. (There's a drop down to split the numbers into peds and bikes - I got frustrated by that and automated copying the data to
https://calgary.bike )
As for counts, in the last presentation to council the 5th St. underpass saw that PM peak traffic (4-6 PM) 10% of the traffic was bikes (in September I believe). Which is actually a really healthy number, especially since it only just launched.
Back on topic, our favourite councillor's latest gaff calling things garbage was largely misreading one of reports and not understanding a footnote.
1 - The worst is 12th Ave. in that it's a 90 second delay if you were to drive from 11th St. SW all the way to 4th St. SE *only* during morning rush hour.