Traffic Count Geography

Traffic count; is the count of vehicles which is conducted along a particular road, path or intersection.

Importance of traffic count

To establish relative importance of any route or road facility.
To decide the priority for improvement and expansion of a road and to allot the funds accordingly.
To plan and design the existing and new facilities of traffic operations on the road.
To make analysis of traffic pattern and trends on the road.
To plan one-way street and other regulatory measures by volume distribution study.
To do design of road intersections, planning signal timings and channelisation by turning movement study.
To do planning of side walks, cross walks and pedestrian signals by pedestrian volume study.
To do economic studies after estimating the highway user’s revenue
To know the variation in land use for different activities ( e.g. Shops , Education, entertainment, offices e.tc.)

Where / which roads to do the survey.
Location of survey points / safe place / away from traffic lights.
Measure distance from town centre.
Which day / when to do the survey.
What time(s) to do the survey.
How long to record / count.
How many surveys to do in one day
How to organise themselves – e.g. one student on each side of the road / number of students in each group / assigning students to sites
What equipment they would need – stopwatch, counters, clipboard, paper for recording
Classification of traffic / what is traffic
How to count and record / tally method
Prepare tally chart

Being unable to count accurately at busy times/lots of traffic/traffic going too fast/too many lanes to count.
Students losing concentration / bored / no break
Breathing difficulties / breathing exhaust fumes
Timings is hard to synchronise
Specific weather difficulty – e.g. rain ruins paper / sunstroke
Keep returning to do count / meet at different times