Description
Automotive traffic has negative effects on the health of urban areas (Friedman), and bicycling is seen as one approach as a healthy and obvious alternative to automotive traffic. (Client Earth, Norback) One solution to increasing bicycling in urban centers is safer, better planned bicycle routes (Lindsey, Use of Greenway Trails). To measure the effectiveness of these efforts or to measure flaws in the bicycling route system, feedback is needed (Lindsey, Use of Greenway). This feedback often comes from a traditional bike counter, which tallies a number of riders on a specific bicycle route. Typically these bike counters are costly, hard to move and have limitations in counting. (Blenski) The goal of this DIY Bike Counter thesis project is to develop a new bike counter at a much lower cost, which is mobile, and works within a 3 step system so better data can be obtained and observed. This data will be more behavioral, lowering barriers to organizations and cities that have limited budgets for alternative transportation projects. The results from this project show that a do-it-yourself counter can be developed at many times less cost than traditional commercial bike counters, by using an ultrasonic sensor and controller with adjustments to online open source code. This counter, due to its low cost and mobile ability, then may be placed to collect data in a gridded system. Once captured, the data can be flowed into visualizations, to show not only bike counts, but bike behaviors as well. This promises to be a big step in closing a gap between geo-location tracking and standard counters, by using a DIY Bike Counter to capture counts and behavior within a gridded system.