Four days away from the big vote on Calgary’s cycle track network, city councillors now have a new report to read.

The Manning Centre issued its report on the pilot project Thursday, using raw data from the last 18 months and performance goals dating back to 2014.

It claims administration retroactively changed performance targets, disproportional satisfaction rates between cyclists compared to drivers and pedestrians and mischaracterized results.

Director of Research Peter McCaffrey said he understands there will be opposition from cycling advocates.

“Some people prefer anecdotes, I prefer data and I hope that this presentation is helpful to councillors who also prefer data over anecdotes,” McCaffrey said, adding the City conducted a good pilot project and compiled strong research.

“The issue is that the administration is expecting councillors to make a decision based on a five minute PowerPoint presentation they gave them where they summarize the results, rather than based on the line-by-line data.”

The report analyzed performance goals laid out in 2014 when the project was approved and said two years later, 17 of the city’s metrics had been changed to make targets easier to meet, without disclosing those changes to the public or council.

When it comes to satisfaction, McCaffrey said for the 7,000 cyclists who said they had a better experience during the project, there were nearly 90,000 pedestrians and drivers who said the opposite.

On safety, the report found every one of the five tracks had increased collision rates.

For example on the 5 St S.W. track, the 2014 benchmark was 2.11 collisions per 100,000 km travelled with a target of 1.9, but the actual rate is 3.4.

On usage, the report says of the 10 locations where the city tracks ridership, only five met targets and were all on 5 and 12 Aves.

McCaffrey said it’s not the centre’s position to approve or disapprove of the project.

“Overall, it’s impossible to tell whether the cycle tracks succeeded or failed, because there was no overall metric tracked for whether it would be a success or failure,” McCaffrey said. “The way that the data has been presented makes it very hard to determine subjectively whether it’s passed or failed.”

Ward 8 Councillor Evan Woolley said he stands by the data that’s been presented.

“I mean it’s unfortunate that the Manning Centre, one of their biggest complaints is the colour coating that we’ve made decisions to use and if colours are the biggest problem we got in terms of collecting that data, I’m happy to chat with them more,” Woolley said, adding it appears they also missed a December 2015 council meeting where changes were made to data collection.

“The changes were made and approved by council and it appears that the Manning Centre has completely missed that report.”

Woolley also said administration is looking into claims is skewed raw data.

“Those are no small assertions,” he said. “Their assertions that this is some nefarious, evil plan at work is laughable.”

Bike Calgary President Agustin Louro said he’s still reading through the report, but also cited the December 2015 update as a big error.

“I think it’s fairly disingenuous,” he said. “I suspect it was a mistake and it looks like they just haven’t done their homework on this project, but it’s fairly disingenuous to be comparing to metrics that the project was never going to be held to.”

“To be accusing the city of something malicious, it just really calls into question the credibility of the report as a whole.”