Despite wildfire smoke, August Fremont bike counts still hit #2 all-time + Will we hit 1M before October?

Each bar represents the percent change compared to the same month the previous year. The Westlake Bikeway opened September 2016, and except for the COVID pandemic shutdown and a few outlier months (usually severe weather related), biking across the Fremont Bridge has been growing steadily ever since. There has not been a month lower than the previous year since February 2025.

When looking at the Fremont Bridge bike counter data one month ago, wildfire smoke degrading Seattle's air quality had diminished bike trips enough that I wrote that the 2026 counts could still fall behind the previous record set in 2019 since at the time the August counts were lagging behind 2019. I was wrong.

Seattle's bike and scooter riders came roaring back in the second half of August to catch up and then topple the August 2019 record to claim the all-time highest August count and the all-time second-highest count for any month. As we reported previously, July 2026 holds the record for highest count.

Every month so far in 2026 has been either first or second all-time except for May which clocked in at third but was very close to first. Three months have registered the most trips all-time. If September maintains its current pace it would be the fourth record in a row, which is extremely rare in this dataset since counting began in 2012. So far September is running an average of 359 trips per day higher than the previous September record. Barring extreme weather, the monthly records for October, November, December and January could be vulnerable, as well. So the next big thing to watch for is whether we can get to 1 million trips for 2026 before October. It could be very close. Needless to say, this has never been done before.

The numbers keep backing up the takeaway from our previous post: We are in a new paradigm for biking in Seattle. The gradual build of bike habits, especially downtown bike commute habits, through the 2010s that culminated in an incredible 2019 is now little more than a matter of history. Forget about chasing those old records, which were set at a time of low downtown office vacancy and five-day-per-week commutes. Seattle is crushing those 2019 numbers even with stubbornly high office vacancy rates and many major employers still allowing for a mix of in-office and work-from-home schedules. Our city's bike movement is now something entirely new and different. People are biking and scootering for all kinds of purposes including work commutes, but these counts are no longer as heavily reliant on work trips.

When a large number of workplaces closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, bike counts predictably cratered as seen in the year-over-year chart at the top of this story. But Seattle continued building out its bike network, especially the network of protected bike lanes downtown. When the downtown waterfront bikeway opened, it formed a key backbone to tie major parts of the network together in a way that had never been possible before. Many more trips are now possible using separated and protected bike routes, and these routes appeal to a much wider portion of the public. The city's streak of year-over-year increases has gone unbroken since February 2025, but the World Cup seems to have been a catalyst to get even more people to try biking. They must have liked it because they stuck around even after the tournament ended.

I-5 Ship Canal Bridge construction and high gas prices due to Trump's Iran War are surely also contributing factors to the increase in interest in cycling. The city's economy is showing signs of trouble, and biking is often a refuge for people and families who suddenly need to find ways to cut back on spending. Even when gas is cheap, cars and insurance are extremely expensive. Now that gas prices are high, selling a car is an excellent way to make ends meet. You also won't need to sit in I-5 traffic hell! But I digress...