As many of you may know, the City placed traffic counting devices across many roads all around our neighborhood during the week of April 20th. The reason for this traffic study was to measure traffic before the Steck Avenue re-striping that will occur this summer. The City needs to collect traffic data before and after the re-striping to gauge how traffic flow is affected.
The City had the budget to perform the full vehicle and bicycle traffic counting on week days, but did not have enough to count pedestrians or bicycle traffic on a week end. The NSCNA Traffic committee volunteered to help collect this vital set of data. The study was setup to measure all pedestrians (walkers, runners) and bicycles (recreational, commuters) at the intersections of Rockwood and Steck as well as Steck and Shoal Creek Blvd. Volunteers measured on both Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 to 11:30 and from 2 to 4pm in shifts. They recorded not only the number of pedestrians and bicycles that came through each intersection, but also recorded from which direction they came from and which direction they headed.
Weather conditions are an important aspect of the study and we were fortunate to have a nice sunny day on Saturday and a cloudy cooler day on Sunday. The tabulated results were given to the City who are currently in the process of evaluating traffic patterns. The Traffic committee will repeat these measurements again next year after Steck is restriped and the before and after data will be compared.
Thanks to Annick Beaudet (City of Austin), Chris Jones, Ken Moyer, Elizabeth Moorehead, Wells Moorehead, Bob Russell, and Jeff Russell for taking time to sit at each corner and count.
You can view some photos from the day here.
