RidePod BT

Active transport advocates worldwide look to Amsterdam for inspiration and advice on how to encourage cycling as a safe, attractive, and effective mode of transport. We chatted with Maarten van der Lof, the City of Amsterdam’s Traffic and Public Space Researcher, to understand the challenges and successes of active transport planning and monitoring cycling in the world’s bicycle capital.

People said no-one would use the Smith Street bike track but [Wollongong City] council data claims thousands of riders are taking advantage of it.

In Utrecht, the public buses are affecting traffic, with great pressure on the road pavement and increased congestion levels. It’s for this reasons why the local municipality has decided the Nelson Mandela bridge is due for a redesign. Currently, the bridge has one sidewalk, one bidirectional traffic lane and one bidirectional cycling path. The changes involve moving the bus lane in the middle of the road and adding pedestrian and cycling facilities on each side of the road.

With 3600 inhabitants, the island of Ameland is a small municipality in the Netherlands, located between the North and the Wadden seas. When the weather is nice, the island can attract over half a million tourists/year. The majority of them travel to the town of Nes by boat. From the jetty, they take taxis, buses, or their personal car/bike to their holiday destination. 

For years, the municipality of Ameland has been recording this traffic with MetroCount systems. A counting program takes place in spring when the island is relatively vacant. This is followed by surveys during the high season, in summer. 

The City of Fremantle in Western Australia is revolutionising the way they visualise and make use of traffic data across their road and cycling network. Since December 2019 they have been using MetroCount’s new traffic data analytics and survey management tool ATLYST to improve road safety, traffic management and infrastructure planning.

By automatically plotting data on an interactive map, ATLYST has allowed the City to quickly identify trends, such as a large increase in cyclists during coronavirus restrictions, and to spot rat-running, streets prone to speeding and areas with high heavy vehicle use.

The world knows and trusts the RoadPod^® VT for easily and accurately surveying road traffic. However, with a global boom in cycling post-COVID-19 MetroCount strongly encourages the use of the RidePod^® BT instead for monitoring bikes.

Bike Cochrane is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run organisation making massive headway in creating a cycling-friendly culture in Cochrane, Canada. The organisation uses bike counters to collect cycling data for informing the planning, construction and maintenance of cycling infrastructure and to win government funding.

We chatted with Paul Perrault, Bike Cochrane's Director of Operations, to understand how they're making a big difference in improving the safety and popularity of cycling in Cochrane. 

Last week’s COVID lockdown in Perth, Australia highlighted the value of real-time traffic data collection for monitoring individual vehicle movements during critical times.

Collecting accurate data from every single vehicle and presenting the information in real-time has, until now, been quite the challenge. However, after many years of research and testing, MetroCount have developed an innovative system that reliably does just this.

MetroCount, in collaboration with Basec, was awarded a 3-year contract to monitor bikes in the Dutch province of North Brabant. Work has begun to commission over 50 bike data sites across the region. MetroCount will utilise the latest bike monitoring technologies to record accurate cycling statistics. Under the management of experienced traffic survey manager Robert Mulder, the project will deliver 3 years of uninterrupted bike data, highlighting trends in cyclist numbers and behaviour.

MetroCount’s vehicle monitoring systems are renowned for collecting data on sealed or paved roads and cycleways. But did you know they’re also extremely effective at surveying traffic on dirt roads and bike paths?

The Municipality of Amsterdam recently banned mopeds from bike paths within the city. An extensive traffic survey carried out by MetroCount Netherlands in 2018 informed the council on percentages and speeds of light mopeds compared to bicycles. This information was used to support and enforce the complete ban a year later.

“By shifting our focus our social impact has become a lot bigger.”

A recent traffic survey on a Paris shared path has changed the game in tube data collection by becoming the first survey of its kind to differentiate active travel modes.

With trials of light segregation of cyclists piloted in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, planners needed short-term data to evaluate how the treatments affected cyclists. The borough utilised portable bike counters supplied by MetroCount to gather specific cycling numbers over a 7-day period at two trial locations.