WayCount is a platform for crowd-sourcing massive amounts of near real-time automobile and bicycle traffic data from a nodal network of inexpensive hardware devices.
The WayCount device works like other traffic counters, but has two key differences: lower cost and open data. At 1/5th price of the least expensive comparable product, the WayCount device is affordable. The WayCount Data Uploader allows you to seamlessly upload and map your latest traffic count data, making it instantly available to anyone online.
What Does WayCount measure?
WayCount measures and records the following four parameters:
The quantity of automobiles and bicycles
The length of time that the counter was deployed (minutes)
The average rate of automobiles and bicycles (qty per hour)
The average speed of automobiles and bicycles (miles per hour)
How do you use WayCount?
1) Deploy the battery-operated WayCount device on a street or bike path.
2) The rubber tube senses bicycles or automobiles and computes volume, rate, and average speed measurements.
3) After a few hours of counting, connect the device to your computer with the included USB cable.
4) Use the Data Uploader webpage at WayCount.com to extract the data with one click
5) Fill-out a quick Context Report and click Submit.
6) The data is mapped! Reset the device for its next use.
Anyone Can Use It!
Planners and engineers
Policy-makers
Students/researchers
Business improvement districts
Property/business owners
Community members
Transportation safety advocates
Why Count Traffic?
Data is Power. Collectively, the WayCount user community has the potential to build a rich repository of traffic count data for busy boulevards, bike paths, alley ways, neighborhood streets, and any other traffic path that deserves measurement. With a better understanding of automobile and bicycle ridership patterns, we can inform the design of better cities and towns.
WayCount is an important addition to the process of measuring the impact of transportation design, and creating livable streets by adding bicycle lanes, public spaces, and developing smart transportation management systems. By creating open-data, we can increase governmental transparency, and provide constituencies with the essential data they need to advocate for rational and necessary improvements to the design, maintenance, and policy of transportation systems.
This information can be used in combination with, or separately from, conventional measurements like Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT). AADT is a standardized indicator for measuring the rate of automobiles traveling down a street and is a value used by transportation engineers to help guide changes to street design based on federal and state transportation design standards. Not all changes to street design are based on AADT, or federal and state standards, however AADT is critical for certain changes and for working with transportation agencies. More about AADT can be found here.
What Can You Do With the Data?
Data collected on WayCount.com allows anyone to effectively work with transportation agencies, advocacy organizations, property developers/owners, and other people who are engaged in making decisions about transportation. With WayCount you can:
Track the average speed of cars driving down your street
Track bicycle ridership on a particular bike-lane, or throughout the entire city
Track how many cars are coming in and out of your parking lot
See how many bicycles or cars parked at your event
Track trends in automobile and bicycle movement down a main road
See what impacts construction is having on your transportation network
Add valuable data to your local or regional research project
By collecting traffic information, or working with other organizations to collect traffic data, you can implement or advocate changes to street design, infrastructure maintenance, transportation programming, and enfacement of regulations and laws, that can result in a safe, efficient, sustainable, and more logical transportation system.