March 22

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LrtKimley Horn is doing the traffic engineering analysis for the portion of the Southwest LRT line that would go through St. Louis Park and into downtown Minneapolis.  They brought us (Traffic Data Inc) on at the beginning of February to get turning movement counts at about 35 intersections.  

They knew they wanted 13 hour turning movement counts (6 am to 7 pm) on a normal weekday for their baseline analysis.  Since getting extra video is cheap (just leave the camera set up for an extra day), they decided to get 48 hours of video just in case someone had questions that would require a 24 hour or 48 hour count.

Several of the intersections also had trains running next to them, so we logged the train crossings (start time, end time, number of cars) in addition to providing the turning movement count data.  We also gave them a usb flash drive with all of the videos so they could watch the videos to make sure there modeling looked reasonable.

We set out half the COUNTcam 120 Camera Units on a Monday and half of them on a Tuesday in order to get 48 hours of video from Tuesdays/Wednesdays/Thursdays.  Wednesday was common at all of the intersections, so we'd do the initial 13 hour counts all on the same day.  We also setup a couple of intersections to get Saturday/Sunday video at a shopping mall.

The complicater was that we got a little snow Thursday that affected the morning commute.  We did all of the 13 hour counts from Wednesday and opted to discount half the intersections $100 since we didn't deliver "normal video" for the second 24 hours.  We'll get new video with clear weather at those intersections if Kimley Horn needs a 48 Hour turning movement count.

Here's the pricing we gave:

  • 48 Hour Video with 13 Hour Turning Movement Count Data at a Signalized Intersection – $750/each
  • 48 Hour Video with 13 Hour Turning Movement Count Data at an Unignalized Intersection – $625/each
  • Add on Service – Count Additional 35 Hours at Above Signalized Intersection – $725/each
  • Add on Service – Count Additional 35 Hours at Above Unignalized Intersection – $550/each

We did the counts in about two weeks.  We averaged about 2x speed at the signals and 4.5x speed at the stop sign controlled intersections.  Kimley Horn has already had us do the additional 35 hours at one of the intersections.  Thankfully it was one of the intersections where we had clear Tuesday/Wednesday video.

Photo Credit:  http://www.newsline.dot.state.mn.us/archive/03/oct/15.html

 

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Mike Spack

My mission is to help traffic engineers, transportation planners, and other transportation professionals improve our world.

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