Yesterday Arlington unveiled the region’s first “bikeometer, ” a high-tech device that counts how many cyclists pass by, and displays the daily and yearly totals for anyone to see.

By publicly displaying the data, the bikeometer helps illustrate that a lot of people really do use bikes to get around.

Arlington bikeometer. The numbers aren’t visible due to the camera scanning frequency. Photo by BeyondDC.

The bikeometer is on the Custis Trail in Rosslyn, near the Key Bridge. It’s a busy crossroads for cycling traffic headed into DC from Virginia. Older bike counts have shown thousands of cyclists per day at the location.

As of about 11:30 am yesterday, after only a couple of hours running, the display already showed 768 cyclists.

The device is technically called an Eco-TOTEM. It reads an underground wire, which counts bikes rolling over the trail above and sends the data to a digital display.

Arlington’s bikeometer is the first such device in the eastern US, although they’re common on the west coast and in Europe.

 Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.