Over the next two weeks, the Savannah Bicycle Campaign and the Coastal Region Metropolitan Planning Organization conduct pedestrian and bicycle counts at locations in Savannah and elsewhere in Chatham County. The data gathered is critically important. We need volunteers to help gather this crucial information.

Jane Love, a transportation planner at the CORE MPO, said the information collected by citizen volunteers is used for a variety of purposes, including “before and after” comparisons that can identify changes in traffic patterns resulting from infrastructure improvements such as new sidewalks or bike lanes.

For example, Love said past counts revealed bike traffic on Price and Habersham streets suggest the Price Street Bike Lane “attracts some southbound trips off of Habersham Street but also attracts some new trips that weren’t captured previously in the selected count locations.”

Conducting counts can also reveal the presence of people on bikes and on foot in places where some may presume they are not likely to be, Love said. When new infrastructure is proposed, sometimes residents question the need by claiming they never see people walking or riding bikes, and don’t dare to do so themselves. Because of this tendency to underestimate bicycle and pedestrian trips “that are in fact occurring in spite of bad conditions,” Love said, data is helpful in ensuring that “decisions are not based on conjecture.”

The information gathered during the counts is also used beyond Savannah, through an effort called the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project.

Volunteers receive instructions on how to conduct the counts, necessary forms and a SBC volunteer t-shirt. Sign up to count bicycles today!