county traffic survey
Saturday I volunteered for another bike traffic count. With my new work schedule I'm not available for the weekday counts at all. (The morning commute is too early, and I'm at work during the evening commute.) I wasn't at my usual spot. No one volunteered for one of the major trails (the W&OD) towards the western edge of the county, and they asked me to count there. The weather was perfect, and I picked a shady bench at a rest stop set up by the Friends of the W&OD. There's also a water fountain and an air pump, and people did come there specifically for the air pump. (I.e. they didn't stop for air and continue on, they stopped for air and went back the way they'd come.)
There were a lot more cyclists on the trail than I see at the traffic circle (with auto traffic) where I usually count. There were also 3 tandems (all with a man in front, and a woman or girl behind), 3 or 4 trail-a-bikes, and only one other recumbent. And there were joggers and walkers, 1 dog (accompanied), and a couple of skaters. My regular circle usually had some foot traffic as well since there were a couple of small shopping centers there (CVS, banks, dry cleaners, 7-11, etc) drawing from the neighborhood. The trail isn't so much part of its neighborhood. It used to be a railroad (the W&OD), and this stretch hasn't gotten past the lingering land-use pattern that faces everything away from it. (I was looking at the back side of relatively new town houses which face a forboding street yet provide no access to this bordering greenway.
I've got to say the trail was a much nicer place to count than the other spot I did once, the corner of 2 4-lane streets, where I needed earplugs.
After this, the county will be doing just annual staffed counts, instead of every 2-3 months. This lines up with a nationwide project that does annual counts. After the first few (more-often-than-yearly) counts here, the county found the results so interesting that they bought some automated equipment for a few spots on the trails, so they'll still be getting a lot of data for a few spots.
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/357233.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
There were a lot more cyclists on the trail than I see at the traffic circle (with auto traffic) where I usually count. There were also 3 tandems (all with a man in front, and a woman or girl behind), 3 or 4 trail-a-bikes, and only one other recumbent. And there were joggers and walkers, 1 dog (accompanied), and a couple of skaters. My regular circle usually had some foot traffic as well since there were a couple of small shopping centers there (CVS, banks, dry cleaners, 7-11, etc) drawing from the neighborhood. The trail isn't so much part of its neighborhood. It used to be a railroad (the W&OD), and this stretch hasn't gotten past the lingering land-use pattern that faces everything away from it. (I was looking at the back side of relatively new town houses which face a forboding street yet provide no access to this bordering greenway.
I've got to say the trail was a much nicer place to count than the other spot I did once, the corner of 2 4-lane streets, where I needed earplugs.
After this, the county will be doing just annual staffed counts, instead of every 2-3 months. This lines up with a nationwide project that does annual counts. After the first few (more-often-than-yearly) counts here, the county found the results so interesting that they bought some automated equipment for a few spots on the trails, so they'll still be getting a lot of data for a few spots.
[This entry was originally posted as http://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/357233.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]