Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Bruce: Hi I'm Bruce Moody with Federal Highway Administration. I'm a Program Management
Analyst and we're here today with Miguel Figliozzi. He is from Portland State University
at what capacity? Miguel: I am an Associate Professor at the
department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Bruce: Can you tell me what we are doing here
today with the Bike-Ped counting project? Miguel: So today this is a task related to
the pilot study looking at different technologies and how they can be used to count bicycles
and pedestrians. So what we are doing is a bit unique and quite new because traditionally
the focus has been on counting vehicles but we're trying to use similar technologies
like tube counts, loop detectors and video to count bicycles and pedestrians.
Bruce: That's great. What's the plan, what will you do with the information once you
collect everything and analyze the data? Miguel: So first we're going to gather all
the data. We're trying to, one, look at the results validate and to see if the tube counts
and loop detectors are accurate enough to be used by the Department of Transportation.
And then we also want to look at how we can use these numbers to estimate average annual
bicycle and pedestrian traffic at intersections like this one.
Miguel: My name is Miguel Figliozzi. I'm a faculty and civil engineer at Portland State
University and here we're working on a project for Oregon DOT that is related to counting
bicycles and pedestrians. We're here at 99 West and Hall Blvd because we're doing a pilot
study trying to look at different technologies to count bicycles and pedestrians. So we got
the help, collaboration and support from ODOT from the traffic counting system division
and maybe you can correct me if I didn't say it right and they are helping us to set
up cameras and tube counters to detect bicycles and pedestrians. So, I'm going to pass the
mic now to Steve and get him to talk about the cameras and introduce himself.
Steve: My name is Steve Chance. I work for the Oregon Department of Transportation. I
am a traffic data analyst. We are out here recording bicycles and pedestrians. Mostly
bicycles I would imagine with our Aventura camera. It is made by Aventura. It's got
a pan and tilt on it. And it's got a zoom which we can zoom into the location that we
are looking at. It runs on a 24 volt system and we can run either 24 hours or 48 hours
with this system and it's a 24 hour recording. Miguel: Is this the first time you guys are
doing this or have you done it before? Steve: This is the first time we've done
it with the bicycle study. We have done regular traffic studies which we do include pedestrians
and bicycles in the counts. But this is the first time we actually just looked at the
bicycles for a specific study. Miguel: Is there anything different or specific
about the setup when you are trying to capture bicycles or pedestrians or anything you would
do different? Steve: No it's basically the same set up.
You may have to zoom in a little bit closer to just keep an eye on just the bike lane
itself or where the bike's going to be riding. It's basically similar. Just got to focus
more on the bike lanes and bike trails. Miguel: We are now at the location where we
are testing the tube counters. I'm going to ask now Ray from ODOT about the type of
equipment and the setup we have here for this specific location.
Ray: Okay I'm Ray Herrera. I'm with ODOT and I do the traffic counts for them. We're
using a Gamma NT. It is set up right now for kind of a cars count. But this is the first
time we've done bicycles with it. We usually do counts on the highway. The difference we
have here is that the spacing is smaller. It's four foot spacing with twenty foot lengths
of hose that we're using and then we tape it down with the tape and nail it into the
pavement and then use flagging tape to make sure that people can see that there's a hose
across the sidewalk, and that's pretty much it. It's basically a miniature version of
what we're doing on the highway only for bicycles. And like I said it's the first
time set up and the difference with what we're doing with the counter is the sensitivity
has three settings low, medium, and high. And right now we are set at high to pick up bicycles
in the bike lane. So that's the biggest difference that we're doing.
Miguel: So, the biggest difference is sensitivity. Is there anything else that is different?
Ray: The spacing is a big factor. The people that made the counters recommend a four foot
to six foot spacing and we're doing the four foot spacing and so thatís about it.
Miguel: And for vehicles it's usually sixteen? Ray: Sixteen feet for vehicles on the highway,
yeah. And we do this basically the same thing on the highway, we tape it all down on the
road. It's kind of new for us. It's kind of a first time thing. We going to be doing
I'm sure more different kinds of stuff with it.
Miguel: Can you explain the difference between this set up and the set up across the street?
Ray: Well the only difference that we have... basically the same setup except for here we
have we did the four foot spacing on the sidewalk too and over there we saw the bicycles coming
on the sidewalk and over there we didn't realize it was happening and we have them
closer together over there. So, we're going to see what the difference is between that
and this and hopefully there's not much difference, but we'll see.
Miguel: We're here at the intersection of 99 West and Hall. And here we are looking
at the setup of the video camera. This is the PSU equipment and we are trying to capture
pedestrian activity on all four corners of the intersection and also to capture the bikes
that are approaching the intersection. So, here we have a camera, I mean a box that
can get four inputs and we're using just three inputs to look at the right turn on
the other side and to look at the all the pedestrian activation balance. So, we're
going to use this video later in the lab to validate how many people are crossing the
intersection and also how many bikes are being detected by the loop detectors.
Miguel: Here we have the twenty-seventy controller and we came a week ago with a different instructor
from ODOT and she checked the sensitivity of the loop detectors for the bike loops.
So, here we can see that the diamond shaped detectors and this is here for the detection
for the bicycle and roughly thirty feet behind we have the other diamond loop to detect the
approaching bicycles. So, every time a bicycle now goes over these loops that is being recorded
by the twenty-seventy controllers. So, we're going to use the data from the controllers,
the data from the video we have set up, the data from the tube counters to cross check
and validate all these different technologies for bicycle and pedestrian counting. The twenty
seventies are also recording the pedestrian phases so every time a pedestrian is requesting
a cross signal to cross the street thatís being recorded here. The only issue with this
technology is that there could be a group of people. It could be one, two, three pedestrians
that are using the same phase. So what we are trying to do with the video is we are
trying to get the estimated correlation between the number of phases that are being requested
and the number of actual people that are using the intersection.