Thursday, August 9, 2012

Portland Gets Bike Counter For Hawthorne Bridge

Start the countdown. Or the count up, in this case. A new bike counter (a.k.a. the bicycle barometer) — the first of its kind in the United States — went live at midnight last night and at this morning's press conference to unveil it, the number of bikes that had crossed it was already well over 2,000.

The counter works via four sets of air hoses strung across the Hawthorne Bridge path. When someone on a bicycle rolls over the hoses, their weight depresses the hose, which creates a pulse that is converted into a radio signal that beams wirelessly to the counter. We've got something similar to this on the new Children of the Sun Trail that is part of the North Spokane Corridor, but nothing on a regular roadway.


Bike Portland has the full story on what they plan to do with information gathered by the counter.

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About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.