Traffic Count Data Crowdsourcing
Examples of Traffic Count Data Crowdsourcing
Placemeter
Placemeter develops sensors and analytics to count all types of traffic. According to City Observatory the sensors are inexpensive and easy to use, making them ideal for use by local residents.
According to Placemeter’s About page: “Placemeter ingests any kind of video to analyze pedestrian and vehicular movement, revealing hidden patterns and strategic opportunities. Our platform leverages proprietary computer vision technology to gather data from live streams. We take privacy very seriously, designing our systems to yield useful data without identity detection.”
City Observatory Article: Counting People and Cars: Placemeter
By Joe Cortright, 27 September 2016.
Waycount
The company waycount.com offers personal sized traffic counters for bikes or cars at less than $200 a unit. Software is available to easily upload traffic data to the Internet for everyone to view and analyse.
Build your own traffic counter instructions from Tomorrow Lab in New York: DYI Traffic Counter.
Numina
From Next City: Tech startup CTY is producing a video based sensor to count bicyclists, pedestrians and more. Their data counting hardware — called Numina — is essentially a camera mounted 15 feet up on a light pole capturing video of a piece of infrastructure. The software is programmed to recognize and count patterns such as a bicyclist or walker crossing the screen. The sensors send the aggregate data via cellular signal to CTY’s servers and erase the original images.
Next City Article: More Accurate Bicycle Counter Could Give Complete Streets Advocates a Boost – By Josh, Cohen; June 6, 2016.
Blog Posts: Traffic Count Data Crowdsourcing
2019 Reading List
Three interesting articles about Crowdsourcing that appeared in late 2019:2020 and beyond: 11 predictions at the intersection of technology and citizen engagement in the DemocracySpot blog by Tiago Peixoto and Tom Steinberg. Lots of food for thought.Why Crowdsourcing Often Leads to Bad Ideas by Oguz A. Acar in the Harvard Business Review, outlining some of […]
Using Open Source Data to Identify Blocked Bus and Bike Lanes
Alan Bell has used machine learning to develop a program that analyses data from traffic cameras to identify blocked bus and bike lanes. He analysed a section of St. Nicholas Avenue in Manhattan and found that the bike lane was blocked 55% of the time and the bus stop was blocked 57% of the time […]
Transit Alliance Miami – Metrorail Arrival Data
The Transit Alliance Miami has created a simple graphic display illustrating the time between Miami Metrorail trains (frequency) at the Government Center station. They have taken Metrorail data and displayed it in an easy to understand format. It is an excellent example of how city residents can use open data to analyse and publicise the […]
2018 Updates
Over the holidays I had a chance to update crowdsourced-transport.com with new information. Here are the highlights: Crowdsourced Public Transport page – added: WikiRoutes – site where users can add information about public transport routes and suggest improvements (PT Mapping). Digital Matatus – an application for using smartphones to map public transport routes (PT Mapping). […]