As part of an ongoing collaboration between the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies MNDOT, this research report details the implementation of various types of automatic counters for nonmotorized traffic and assess how to estimate average daily and miles traveled. All sensors tested in the study produced reasonably accurate measures of bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Most sensors undercounted because of their inability to distinguish and count bicyclists or pedestrians passing simultaneously. The objectives were to install and validate permanent automated sensors, use portable sensors for short duration counts, develop models for extrapolating counts, and integrate continuous counts into MnDOT traffic monitoring databases.
Download the full report.