Traffic Monitoring Program
Quality data is an important tool for policy- and decision-making. Transportation data is no different. The City and County of Honolulu’s Department of Transportation Services (DTS) collects data from all modes of transportation for seven key reasons:
For example, DTS conducts speed studies to determine whether countermeasures are warranted to improve the safety of all roadway users. Additionally, as part of DTS’ Vision Zero Project, we are collecting data on motorist yield compliance rates, and reporting it back on the street to the public to help increase driver awareness and compliance.
Traffic data such as volumes, turning movement counts, and queue lengths are vital to optimizing traffic signal timing. Additionally, DTS collects traffic data first during the planning and design phases of important Complete Streets projects to ensure estimated transportation impacts are well understood and accurate. Data are collected again after completion of the project to evaluate whether the roadway is operating as anticipated and if not to inform post-implementation refinements.
Knowing which streets get the most usage helps the City to anticipate which roads experience the most wear and tear. Overall traffic volumes and the percentage of truck traffic help the City to prioritize maintenance activities.
The data that DTS collects will help the City measure its progress toward making Honolulu a more pedestrian and bike-friendly city. Furthermore, staff regularly collect transportation data in response to requests from members of the public, neighborhood boards, and political entities. Our partners at the Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) collect transportation data as part of the FHWA Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS).
The data DTS collects is used to justify and prioritize funding for future Complete Streets projects. For instance, active transportation facilities that exhibit commuter-type travel patterns are eligible for federal transportation funding. In addition, data on bicycle and pedestrian usage can be used to support grant applications for discretionary federal funding.
Data such as average daily (vehicular) traffic as well as bike- and foot-traffic help businesses evaluate where to locate. Parking utilization studies can be used to inform pricing of on- and off-street parking facilities. Setting parking prices to reflect market demand ensures that parking is available and encourages parking turnover, which is good for businesses.
The data that DTS collects are shared with regional stakeholders for the calibration and validation of the Oʻahu Travel Demand Forecasting Model, which is used to measure project impacts and prioritize funding. This data is also a key input to transportation engineering studies. See the Data Eco-Counter section below to learn more about what data are available to the public, and which standards the City requires for the collection of transportation data.
What is Active Transportation Monitoring?
In addition to conducting vehicular traffic count studies, the Department of Transportation Services is deploying 25 Active Transportation Monitoring (ATM) bicycle and pedestrian counters1 across the island with 14 of them in the Honolulu area. These locations were selected to collect data from a broad spectrum of facility types (bicycle lanes; protected bicycle lanes; side paths; trails) and travel patterns (such as commutation, recreation, and utilitarian). The locations also represent different “area” types (urban, suburban, rural) across the island.
Along with providing usage data, which is invaluable to the planning process, having continuous data allows the development of seasonal correction factors, which when applied to a short duration count (one week), produce Annual Average Daily Bicycles and Pedestrians measurements (AADB & AADP, respectively) which is analogous to Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) used for vehicular traffic.
Data on bicycle and pedestrian travel is essential for cities and cyclists alike. Bike and pedestrian counters will help DTS understand how people use our streets and paths, and how to best plan for the future. Knowing how many people are biking and walking can help us make informed decisions about where to install new connecting bike lanes, add more bike racks, or widen sidewalks. Additionally, walking and bicycling data can be combined with existing data from other transportation modes to obtain a holistic understanding of travel patterns in Honolulu. Finally, the data that we collect will help the City measure our progress toward making Honolulu a more pedestrian and bike-friendly city.
ATM devices count bicyclists and pedestrians differently. For bicyclists, inductive loops are used, similar to the diamond-shaped loops at most City roadway intersections. These wired loops are embedded in the pavement and detect a change to the earth’s magnetic field created by a metallic object (bike) passing over. For pedestrians, a post containing a pyro-electric sensor will detect variations in the ambient temperature from people that walk next to it.
1 These installations were funded in part through grants from the Federal Highway Administration in cooperation with the Oʻahu Metropolitan Planning Organization.