Spokane Street numbers on display — Somebody needs to come up with $20 grand for the Broadway bikeway bike counter (Image: SDOT)

When it comes to planning a city, if it can’t be counted, it doesn’t count. The Mark and Susan Torrance Foundation and the Rails to Trails Conservancy will help purchase seven new electronic bike counters for the city — including one to tally daily riders on the coming-soon Broadway bikeway, the Seattle Bike Blog reports. But a community push could make the data collection even cooler.

“Not all the counters will include a display keeping a live-updated tally, like the ones on the Fremont and lower West Seattle bridges,” SBB writes. “But all will gather 24/7, real-time usage data that will help shine more light on people’s cycling habits and track trends.”

The Broadway counter as currently planned will feed data to the Seattle.gov Bike Counter page won’t present a visual display along the street to show how many riders have used the bikeway. The Cascade Bicycle Club offered up an estimate of around $20,000 plus installation costs if Capitol Hill wants to show off its numbers for what is likely to be a heavily used route. Right now, no organizations, businesses or nearby institutions like Seattle Central are talking about footing the bill.

The Broadway bikeway’s reports will be available online — you can see the latest totals for the existing counters including Fremont here

A separated cycle track that will accompany the First Hill streetcar route along Broadway, the bikeway between Madison and the Denny Way terminus is slated to be ready for its first riders in October with the southern portion opening up before the end of the year. The bikeway will eventually extend all the way up to north Broadway when the streetcar route is extended toward Volunteer Park.