How many people ride the Northern Tier each year?

[dan_t]

Just wondering how many people ride the Northern Tier each year. Any idea?

[John Nelson]

This question gets frequently asked, not only about this route, but about other routes (most often about the TransAmerica Trail). The answer is always that nobody knows. The ACA knows how many maps they sell, but that's a poor correlation to the number of riders, since maps are sold to people that never ride the route, people start and never finish, and a single map set can be used by a whole group. There's no sign-in book at the start, nor finish book at the end. The ACA does count the number of people who stop at the HQ in Missoula, but it's likely that count misses a lot of people who never go there, show up when they are closed, or don't bother to sign in. And the ACA encourages people to log their tours on this site, but I'll bet that most people don't. Then there are questions about what qualified as riding a route. Does that mean every mile? How do you count people who rode part of the route?

People love to make guesses, usually based on how many people they saw when they rode the route, or how many people they counted in the log book at Cooky's Cafe, or something else, but these guesses are very rough.

There's an opportunity for you here. Devise a system to get an accurate count. Get volunteers to take shifts at the Yorktown Victory Monument and the Columbia River Maritime Museum for all the daylight hours for the year, who collect names and then contact them later to see how far they got.

It would be a big job. Too big.

[dan_t]

IMO as a statistician, map sales would be a pretty good proxy. It seems like people buying map sets are pretty serious. Resales could be estimated reasonably well from Amazon and Ebay histories. Really what I'm trying to establish is the order of magnitude. Is it 10, 100, 1000?

[UncaBuddha]

Case in point. I ordered the Idaho Hot Springs mapset a couple of years ago but life and fires conspired to keep me away.

[CMajernik]

In 2018 we sold 88 map sets of the Northern Tier. Individual maps numbers are higher. And map sets for the TransAm, the Southern Tier, and the Pacific Coast are higher.

[kearnejo@yahoo.com]

As someone currently riding the Northern Tier alone, I find myself asking the same question.

 I've yet to meet another cyclist going East to West and I'm nearly done. I did start in August but even then places like The Notch Hostel or the ferry operator from Vermont to NY said they had maybe a handful over the summer.

I've personally passed no more than 5 or 6 coming the other way.

So my guess is no more than a dozen a year, a tiny amount.

[jamawani]

It's hard to meet a lot of people going the same direction -
especially if you are riding at an average pace.
And even more so if you are riding outside of the main touring season.
I figure there are about as many riding eastbound as westbound.

In the past you used to have some good barometers.
By the 1990s, everybody on the TransAm stopped in at June Curry's Cookie House.
Even if just to visit, get some water, eat a cookie, and say "Hi".
I would venture to guess that the peak was in the 80s and 90s.

I've been touring since the mid-80s and feel there has been a noticeable decline.
My point of reference is hiker/biker campsites at national parks.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, there were always other cyclists.
In 2019 there was one other couple for 1 of 3 nights in Yellowstone
and a group that shared Rising Sun on 1 of three nights in Glacier.
Yosemite may not count since they don't post that cyclists can camp at North Pines.
But on my last trip, 2019, there were no other cyclists - a first.

Others may wish to share, but I feel that long-distance, self-contained touring
has seen a huge drop-off over the past 25 or 30 years.
If it time? Money? Inclination?

[canalligators]

Others may wish to share, but I feel that long-distance, self-contained touring
has seen a huge drop-off over the past 25 or 30 years.
If it time? Money? Inclination?

Traffic volume increases? Distracted drivers?  Aging enthusiasts?  Antagonistic drivers?

I get the sense that long distance touring is in decline generally, and I bet AC thinks so too, as they are emphasizing shorter tours.  They are also offering few self-contained tours and more van supported.

The times, they are a-changin’.

[davidbonn]

I think a bunch of things are going on independently.

One is that the popularity of outdoor activities tend to wax and wane in popularity over time, often on weird seven or nine year cycles.

Another is that most of the ACA routes were laid out forty to fifty years ago when there were 100 million fewer people in this country and correspondingly less traffic.  Very few cyclists enjoy cycling in heavy traffic.  Doing so with a fully loaded touring bike at the end of a sixty mile day is Not Fun.

Along with the above, recent stats show a pretty substantial increase in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities these last few years.  It is unclear as to why (it doesn't seem to be because of larger vehicles or distracted driving).  So fairly or unfairly bicycle touring is probably seen as a more dangerous activity.

A lot of people who previously would have been "bicycle touring" are now "bikepacking" (*).  The popularity of the GDMBR and the many newer bikepacking routes on various websites shows that a lot of people art still Getting Out There.

(*) -- I don't consider bikerpacking or bicycle touring to be clearly distinct activities, but rather different sets of tools to solve the challenges of bicycle travel.  The Bicycle Police won't arrest you if you mix the toolsets and you shouldn't worry about doing so.