The UCLA Complete Streets Initiative’s work on the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse project received both federal and local attention this week.
Locally, the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is seeking a way to improve how traffic counts are done for cyclists and pedestrians. In its report to the City Council, the Department wrote that traffic counts that include metrics for cyclists and pedestrians will better support the prioritization of future transportation and infrastructure projects. Complete Streets Initiative staff advised LADOT how to adjust their current methodology to be consistent with the standards for counting and reporting set forth in the Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse. The council report acknowledged this partnership and assistance in developing a template and plans to use this template to enter count data into the Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse. The complete council report can be viewed here.
“Having the City of Los Angeles as an active participant in the clearinghouse is an exciting and promising moment for open data in the region. We were pleased to work with LADOT to see how their practices could meet our proposed standard and ensure they are putting that data into the project so that anyone in the region can gain access to bicycle and pedestrian counts in the City of Los Angeles in an easy way,” said Complete Streets Initiative Program Manager Madeline Brozen.
Additionally, the Clearinghouse was mentioned in the Transportation Research Board’s Circular, “Monitoring Bicyclist and Pedestrian Travel Behavior: Current Research and Practice.” These circular publications provide practitioners, researchers, and others with state-of-the-practice information. The circulator can be viewed here. The Los Angeles clearinghouse joined the likes of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, Portland State University, and others in providing ongoing research on archiving and sharing bicycle count data. Noting the questions and challenges in this topic area, the clearinghouse provides one option for others to emulate and hold as an example of how to surmount the challenge of collecting, standardizing, and making bicyclecount data publically available.
The Bicycle Count Data Clearinghouse is co-sponsored by SCAG and Metro. The Complete Streets Initiative worked with Ryan Snyder Associates, Kittelson & Associates, and the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition in developing the project. The website features bicycle counts from over 600 locations covering over 2,700 hours of counting and can be accessed at bikecounts.luskin.ucla.edu.
