Texas Department of Transportation aims to develop a pedestrian and bicyclist count monitoring process to aid several transportation planning projects spanning safety, design and traffic operations. Automated counting equipment adopted by cities and metropolitan planning organization (MPO)’s in Texas was compared for both permanent and short-duration location counts. Installation of both permanent and portable counter equipment in Austin and Houston was demonstrated. Count equipment was evaluated in their ability to measure smaller time intervals (15 minutes), direction of travel and distinguish between bicyclists and pedestrians. In addition, researchers also evaluated the potential for using crowdsourced data for pedestrian and bike counts. The purchase, installation and testing of the counters were conducted during 2016-2017.

Permanent Counters

The initial cost and life-cycle costs of three permanent counters that met the requirements for the study or tested in the Texas were evaluated, including costs associated with power usage, communications and reporting features (data format, vendor tools for analysis, and accuracy). Table 1 shows the cost details.

Table 1. Cost details for the initial cost and 10-year life cycle cost for the three permanent counters.

Short-duration Counters

For short-duration counters, the mix of equipment is more diverse and cost of them can vary very differently. For example, for two infrared sensors evaluated in the study (both counters are passive infrared and do not differentiate between bicyclists and pedestrians), one type of passive infrared sensor that can measure user direction costs $4,400, compared to another infrared counter that costs $900 that cannot measure user direction. The study concludes that passive infrared sensors are a cost-effective technology for long term counts, but they cannot differentiate between pedestrians and bicyclists. Inductance loops is a cost-effective technology for long-term bicycle counts and combination of manual and automated count techniques provides the most accurate information for longer periods of time.