Automated Pedestrian Counter
Pedestrian safety is a huge issue in New Jersey. Over the 2001 to 2003 time period, there were 378 pedestrian fatalities and thousands of pedestrian injuries in New Jersey. Pedestrian safety and accommodation is a challenge to plan for because of the lack of easily accessible information on pedestrian volumes and behavior in various contexts. The Department's policy and obligation is to consider the needs of pedestrians in all transportation projects, yet this is particularly challenging due to a lack of information from which sound planning decisions can be made. One component that can assist in making decisions on how to accommodate and plan for pedestrians is having accurate counts of pedestrians in the transportation system. The lack of accurate data related to how many pedestrians use any given sidewalk, path, crosswalk, or other pedestrian facility constitutes one of the most significant barriers to pedestrian inclusive decision making. In order to assess how to best accommodate pedestrians in department projects it is imperative to understand pedestrian behavior, particularly pedestrian flow rates. However, securing accurate pedestrian counts manually is a time-intensive endeavor. The manual collection of pedestrian counts is usually conducted in a limited fashion due to the time and staff resources required. Because of this, this critical piece of information is often unavailable, denying decision makers a crucial piece of information from which to make sound multi-modal decisions.
Automatic pedestrian counting and tracking systems are a technology that is currently available to address this issue. These systems can significantly improve the accuracy and amount of pedestrian data collected, therefore increasing the understanding of pedestrian flow and behavior and allow for better decision making. DOT's in other states have conducted studies on these technologies and assessed the feasibility of their use. It would be beneficial for the department to conduct a literature review on this topic and scope out the costs and feasibility of utilizing these technologies in NJ. It would probably be beneficial to conduct the literature review and then follow that up with a pilot program where a limited number of automated pedestrian counters could be purchased and then deployed. The ease of use and value of the data could then be assessed. This would allow the department to then consider the desirability and feasibility of using automated pedestrian counters at a larger scale.
