My impression is that traffic engineers usually count "traffic" by running an air-hose across the road and attaching it to a device that counts clicks. If the device is sensitive enough, it will count the clicks made by bikes as well as cars, but in that case it won't distinguish between cars and bikes. (Correct me if I'm wrong...) On rare occasions, I've seen people sitting by the road with clickers in their hands; that kind of survey can distinguish between cars and bicycles, but it must be pretty expensive.
I think a website would be a good idea. The numbers it generated wouldn't be "scientific," but they would give us an idea of which roads are of significant interest to bicyclists. A website could also ask riders *why* they rode on a particular route (e.g., transportation, recreation, masochism, etc.); an ordinary traffic count would probably not collect this information. Would the servers for the Bicycling Community Page or the BFW website be able to support something like this? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darin Burleigh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Ann Freiwald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 7:07 PM Subject: Re: [Bikies] County Liability Question and numbers of bikers > At 12:06 PM -0500 10/16/03, Ann Freiwald wrote: > > >Another question they asked, which I get asked a lot is, "So how many > >people actually ride on these county and town roads." And unless the > >county is lucky enough to host SAGBRAW or some other large ride, I > >really do not have an answer for them. Does anyone? Can we start a web > >site like the Car Free Challenge where we all voluntarily record our > >miles and where we rode on a weekly basis? Not scientific I know but it > >would be something. Any ideas? > > Transportation officials usually have traffic counts for roads, > where 'traffic' is defined as 'motor vehicles'. It really is the > county officials responsibility to count bikes. And not just for > one hour on one day, like they did at Old Sauk road. > > -darin > > > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies > _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
