What we’re doing
We are working with the Highway Division to explore whether a “materials procurement” for active transportation facilities user counters could be useful to municipalities. “Materials procurement” means that MassDOT buys the item and gives it to municipalities free-of-charge to install on their own right-of-way (e.g., a trail). This can lower barriers to access for municipalities that might not otherwise have the funds to purchase certain items. In the first iteration of the experiment, we are offering counters that simply count the presence of a user. These counters use passive infrared only, no cameras. They cannot detect device speeds. They are not able to distinguish by mode, that is, they can’t differentiate between pedestrians and people on bicycles, but rather present an overall “user” count. However, we think that building the program infrastructure and seeing if municipalities find value in overall counts of users on their active transportation facilities is a useful exercise in its own right. We hope to provide mode-separated counters to municipalities in possible future versions of this experiment.
Why we're doing it
We are always interested in finding new ways to support municipalities. The Highway Safety section has had great success with “materials procurement” initiatives on behalf of municipalities, such as giving out 4-Foot Passing signs, Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons, and school zone assemblies. We want to see if other sections of the Highway Division can also leverage this distribution approach.
We’re also taking up an item discussed at length by the Special Commission on Micromobility, namely: data. While Recommendation 5 in the Commission’s final report is specifically about crash data, we also want to support communities to gather data outside of the context of crashes. How many people are using that new trail or shared use path? How does usage change over the course of the year? Are there any interesting insights about a sidewalk or trail and its adjacent land use?
What we hope to learn
- Are municipalities interested in active transportation facility overall user counts? How does having those counts help support their goals regarding safety, investment, or others?
- How simple or difficult is it to hand off the counters to the municipality, install the counters, and then connect the data from the counters to MassDOT’s nonmotorized travel data dashboard?
- Should we continue to offer counters — ideally that are able to separate users by mode — to municipalities in this way? In a different way?
- Are portable counters the “sweet spot” between data collection fidelity, implementation effort, and cost?
Who's involved
MassDOT Highway
Massachusetts Municipal Association
The Lab @ MassDOT