Only 1,500 cyclists on EDSA daily, says MMDA. Another bike count says it’s more like 7,000.

MANILA, Philippines – Acting Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) chairperson Romando Artes has, since March, been stating that “only 1,586 cyclists” traverse the major thoroughfare EDSA on a daily basis.

He has used this figure to justify the MMDA’s opposition to proposals to widen EDSA bike lanes, and on Wednesday, April 24, to explain why the agency is considering proposals to altogether remove or reduce the size of those bike lanes.

“There are many proposals, even to DOTr [Department of Transportation] that say the bike lanes are underutilized. In our data, only 1,500 cyclists use the EDSA bike lane everyday,” he said during the Kapihan sa Manila Bay Forum, as quoted by the Inquirer.

But another major bike count study, conducted by the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC), yielded a much higher count of EDSA cyclists: over 7,000.

“Bilang Siklista was able to count more than 7,000 bikers along five key points in EDSA located in Quezon City, Mandaluyong, and San Juan, in just a span of four hours,” said Celine Tabinga of ICSC.

Rappler, in a call with MMDA Traffic Engineering Center head Neomie Recio on Thursday, April 25, found that the 1,586 number was obtained by MMDA by counting cyclists from just one spot of EDSA, for one day, on July 28, 2023.

According to Recio, they did this count from 6 am to 8 pm in just one spot of EDSA, somewhere between Ortigas Avenue and Annapolis. They counted every hour during that time period, both on the north-bound and south-bound sides.

The MMDA did two other counts in that same spot on two other dates last year. During a whole-day count on July 26, they counted 1,229 cyclists. On another count on July 27, they counted 1,225 cyclists.

“We focused on that spot because the Department of Transportation is proposing elevated bike lanes in that area,” Recio told Rappler.

Recio admitted the 1,586 is just a partial figure given the limitation of their count. The problem is, MMDA chief Artes now uses this number as a total EDSA bike count.

The ICSC’s 2023 Bilang Siklista bike count, meanwhile, involved five spots on EDSA and was conducted during two rush -our periods in each day of counting. They counted