Publication Details

Data checks for bicycle and pedestrian counts

Type: conferencePapers

Author(s): Glazer, Amanda; Stark, Philip; Miah, Md. Mintu; Nordback, Krista; Griswold, Julia B.; Skabardonis, Alex

Publisher: Transportation Research Board

Url: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377362665_DATA_CHECKS_FOR_BICYCLE_AND_PEDESTRIAN_COUNTS

Publication Date: Jan-2024

Address: Washington, DC

Abstract: The accuracy of instrumental counts is affected by the instrument’s sensing technology, details of siting and installation, calibration, random error, and malfunctions. Some of these errors cannot be detected without an independent, accurate count to compare to the instrumental count. But some failures can be detected (imperfectly) through their signal in the count data, which has led to a variety of algorithms to clean and interpolate instrumental count data. Any such algorithm can have false positives (flagging good data as bad) and false negatives (failing to flag bad data). This study reviews the literature on data checks and compares the output of various proposed methods on data from 311 continuous bicycle and 144 pedestrian counters in California from 2019 to 2022. For each data check, we find the percentage of data rejected as the tuning parameters of the measure change, and how the percentage depends on the overall volume at the site. We introduce new checks that may be useful in some situations, and the rationale for those checks, including checks for pedestrian continuous counts which have been less studied than bicycle traffic volumes.

Conference name: Transportation Research Board 103rd Annual Meeting