Pedestrian survey/traffic counts

• Pedestrian survey/traffic counts are used to find out how and why the density and movement of pedestrians or traffic varies in different parts of an urban environment.
• The number should increase towards the CBD.
• Data can be taken at the same time at all the data collection points to allow data to be compared. It would need to be done on different days, at different times of the day and at different times of the year to identify when issues occur. 
• Equipment needed to carry out a pedestrian survey/traffic count:

  -       A click counter/tally marks.

  -       A town-centre map/satellite image.

  -       Recording sheets.

  -       Outdoor People Counters (OPC)/(electronic footfall counters)
• Methodology: Location

  a range of sites, including:

  main roads with major junctions/crossroads - roundabouts to record the relative distribution of vehicles coming off a main road;

  minor roads to highlight the fall-off in numbers close to busy areas

  passages and paths.
• Methodology: Time

  both peak and off-peak times
• Methodology: Frequency

  over several different days/weeks/months for comparative purposes 
• Methodology: weather

  Under different weather conditions
• Methodology: other

  -       Count the number of people/vehicles that pass a fixed point over a set amount of time.

  -       Same time over the different sites.

  -       Devise a strategy before starting.
• In a rural setting how what are other methods that could be taken out?

  • Erosion of a footpath can also be measured at the same points as the counts, allowing a relationship between usage and environmental degradation can be investigated 
  • Litter counts can be compared to find any relationships
• considerations and limitations:

  • One off sampling is suspect and may lead to unreliable results.
  • Pedestrianised areas are challenging to count because the number of people will be large and best to avoid these as they show biased results.
  • OPC’s will generate a far greater data set than researchers
  • Researchers can generate categories when collecting data where OPS only record a count.
  • Human error can occur
• Processing techniques:

  • flow line map to show movement
  • population pyramids
  • chi-squared to compare two towns