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Counting traffic

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Watis
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Counting traffic

#230386

Postby Watis » June 18th, 2019, 10:54 am

One for DrFfybes perhaps?

I'm sure we're all familiar with seeing those pneumatic rubber tubes laid across the road, presumably to count vehicles using that road. There are usually two tubes laid a foot or so apart from each other, presumably to provide information on the direction of travel (and possibly an approximate indicator of speed?).

On my commute, three pairs of rubber tubes have been laid on a road, each about 200 yards from the previous ones. Thing is, there are no junctions between the three sets of tubes, the only way to join or leave this stretch of road is to or from a private driveway.

Any ideas what the powers that be might be collecting data on, and why they would need three sets of tubes?

Watis

Itsallaguess
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Re: Counting traffic

#230389

Postby Itsallaguess » June 18th, 2019, 11:00 am

Watis wrote:
I'm sure we're all familiar with seeing those pneumatic rubber tubes laid across the road, presumably to count vehicles using that road. There are usually two tubes laid a foot or so apart from each other, presumably to provide information on the direction of travel (and possibly an approximate indicator of speed?).

On my commute, three pairs of rubber tubes have been laid on a road, each about 200 yards from the previous ones. Thing is, there are no junctions between the three sets of tubes, the only way to join or leave this stretch of road is to or from a private driveway.

Any ideas what the powers that be might be collecting data on, and why they would need three sets of tubes?


The single-tubes count traffic, and the double-tubes can additionally take a record of speed and direction, so I assume this section of road is being monitored for car-speed at various points.

One reason might be to do with the risk of accidents, but often if there's road-works planned for the section of road, then monitoring will go on for a period before the work is started so that the engineers know what sort of traffic density to plan for, usually with regards to temporary traffic lights or what level of safety-barriers are required for the workers etc..

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

DrFfybes
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Re: Counting traffic

#230466

Postby DrFfybes » June 18th, 2019, 1:51 pm

Itsallaguess wrote:
The single-tubes count traffic, and the double-tubes can additionally take a record of speed and direction, so I assume this section of road is being monitored for car-speed at various points.

One reason might be to do with the risk of accidents, but often if there's road-works planned for the section of road, then monitoring will go on for a period before the work is started so that the engineers know what sort of traffic density to plan for, usually with regards to temporary traffic lights or what level of safety-barriers are required for the workers etc..

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


Pretty much what he said, however if they are tubes (which are pretty old fashioned) the multiple sets will be for vehicle classification and speed. It can be hard to tell if 2 inputs are from a lorry, 2 cars, or a car and motorcycle. These could be cross checking patterns to determine vehicle speed (same pattern at different locations) and vehicle type (repeated pattern).

Given the advances in kerbside electronic monitoring devices and CCTV and image analysis, many surveys are done with CCTV strapped to lamp columns these days.

Paul

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Re: Counting traffic

#230535

Postby tjh290633 » June 18th, 2019, 5:28 pm

You will be hard pushed to find lampposts on a country road. Road sign supports are more likely.

TJH

Watis
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Re: Counting traffic

#230649

Postby Watis » June 19th, 2019, 8:43 am

DrFfybes wrote:
Pretty much what he said, however if they are tubes (which are pretty old fashioned) the multiple sets will be for vehicle classification and speed. It can be hard to tell if 2 inputs are from a lorry, 2 cars, or a car and motorcycle. These could be cross checking patterns to determine vehicle speed (same pattern at different locations) and vehicle type (repeated pattern).

Given the advances in kerbside electronic monitoring devices and CCTV and image analysis, many surveys are done with CCTV strapped to lamp columns these days.

Paul


Thank you, Paul.

Having driven over these sets of tubes again:

- no cameras have appeared.

- there is a change of speed limit between two of the sets, so speed information will be useless (other than for boy racers).

- vehicles entering or leaving the road (there are houses down both sides of the road) will skew the readings as the data cannot be read as being the same vehicles crossing each set. A car pulling out into a long gap may be measured as the vehicle behind it speeding because it will appear to be that the vehicle further back has caught up with the vehicle it was previously following but now there's another vehicle in front of it.

Watis

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Re: Counting traffic

#230672

Postby jofc » June 19th, 2019, 9:52 am

It might be that traffic information is required as part of planning, if someone is trying to put a new estate of houses off that stretch of road.

Or if there has been accidents involving traffic coming out of driveways when passing traffic is not observing speed limit change

PinkDalek
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Re: Counting traffic

#230728

Postby PinkDalek » June 19th, 2019, 12:00 pm

Watis wrote:Having driven over these sets of tubes again:

- no cameras have appeared.

- there is a change of speed limit between two of the sets, so speed information will be useless (other than for boy racers).

- vehicles entering or leaving the road (there are houses down both sides of the road) will skew the readings as the data cannot be read as being the same vehicles crossing each set. A car pulling out into a long gap may be measured as the vehicle behind it speeding because it will appear to be that the vehicle further back has caught up with the vehicle it was previously following but now there's another vehicle in front of it.


The Speed Surveys I've been involved with are not measuring the speed between the two separate sets of tubes/counters. Rather they measure the speed (as well as traffic flows) between the parallel tubes that are about 6 inches apart.

You should be able to find out more about Speed Surveys in your area from your local Council's website.

A recent one here included the commentary:

The counters have been installed in positions where officers believe they will obtain an overall awareness of the speeding along [wherever] which will then enable them to develop some suitable options.

The calculations are then performed and they look at the 85th percentile speed and other factors before deciding if additional traffic calming measures would be effective. In your case they may be looking to make both speed limits the same.


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