Jane and I had a little mini-vacation this week. We went out to Portland, OR to visit Ian and Bill at Vehicle Counts (they manufacture the Pico counters we sell). They were very gracious hosts and we had a fun trip.
We only had a day to bum around, so we opted to stay downtown and mainly eat/drink (seems like that's what you do in Portland). I like how the parking regulation signs downtown are at about waist height as shown in the picture. For some reason this struck me as more aesthetically pleasing than the signs we have in Minnesota seven feet up in the air. Also seemed easier to see from the car.
We did a big walking loop along the Willamette River. As we were walking back over the Hawthorne Bridge, we came across this set of tubes. It had a knot in the tube on the "dummy end," instead of being two separate tubes the way we would normally install them. I looked off to the side of the bridge to see where they went, but they tucked under the deck and I couldn't see what they were plugged into.
When we finished crossing the bridge, we saw this bicycle counter. It was working accurately as we watched bicycles go over the tubes.
I've always set up a pair of 50 or 60 foot tubes for doing speed and classification counts. We're going to test out putting a knot in the middle of a 100 foot tube (like the bicycle setup) and see if that has any advantages over using two 50 foot tubes. I think the knotted 100 foot tube could be more accurate because each tube run should be the same length (sometimes tubes get mismatched). It would also be easier than cutting and plugging the tube to make it into two 50 footers.
Has anyone used a tube setup like this (long tube knotted in the middle instead of two paired up tubes)? Thoughts?
