It’s important to know how many people are biking, walking, running, and rolling on the trails and bike lanes we build.
Why? It tells funders that their investments are being used. It tells us what positive health impacts these projects can have in a community. Without these traffic counts, we can only assume that what we’re doing is worthwhile.
We’d rather prove it.
To do that, we are working with our Coalition partners to get automated counters installed with new projects. The Dequindre Cut extension has bike and pedestrian counters at three locations. The Cass Avenue bike lanes have eight counters, two of which have electronic kiosks displaying the daily and annual counts in real-time.
Through a generous grant from DALMAC, the Coalition was able to purchase two portable bike counters. These let us quickly take on-road and trail counts that are very accurate..
All of this count data is fed into our centralized web database which we will share with our members and SEMCOG.
We also applaud the U.S. Department of Transportation for recognizing the importance of counting bicycles and pedestrians.
When we have more accurate data, we can make better decisions and solve problems more effectively for those traveling on foot and on bikes. That leads to improved safety, and that’s an outcome we can all live with.
Permanent bicycle and pedestrian counters
| Name | Primary Route | Cross Street | City | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display #1 - Cass/Warren | Cass | Warren | Detroit | š² |
| Display #2 - Cass/Michigan | Cass | Michigan | Detroit | š² |
| Milwaukee - Cass | Cass | Milwaukee | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Kirby - Cass | Cass | Kirby | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Lafayette - Cass | Cass | Lafayette | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Adams - Cass | Cass | Adams | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Temple - Cass | Cass | Temple | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Canfield - Cass | Cass | Canfield | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Dequindre Cut @ Mack | Dequindre Cut | Mack | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Dequindre Cut @ Wilkins | Dequindre Cut | Wilkins | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Dequindre Cut @ Gratiot | Dequindre Cut | Gratiot | Detroit | šš½ š² |
| Dequindre Cut @ Mack | šš½ š² | |||
| Dequindre Cut @ Gratiot | šš½ š² | |||
| Dequindre Cut @ Wilkins |
The Cass counters were installed as part of a Midtown Detroit project that also included the Midtown Loop, bike lanes, and repair stations. The Dequindre Cut counters were installed and are owned by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy.
This above counter information is also available in GeoJSON format.
Additional Resources
- SEMCOG Bicycle and Pedestrian Counts
- Leveraging the spatial-temporal resolution of crowdsourced cycling data to improve the estimation of hourly bicycle volume, ScienceDirect, June 2022
- Making Bikes Count, NACTO, March 2022
2 replies on “Traffic Counts”
Any suggested sources to learn more about how these function? Do the counter tubes cover enough traveling surface space to sense cyclists that aren’t riding in bike lanes or even within six inches of a bike lane?
The best place to start may be the Eco Counter web site. Our counters are the ECO Tube variety. While we’re not experts on this (yet), we learned you could run the tubes across the entire road or just across a bike lane/trail. They discuss this on their web site.