Conducting Comprehensive Traffic Intercept Surveys: Quality Counts Partners with Arlington Transportation Partners

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Quality Counts, led by senior operations manager, David Bernard, was contracted by Arlington Transportation Partners to conduct traffic intercept surveys at three residential mixed-use apartment buildings in Arlington County.  Arlington Transportation Partners required this data to obtain a better understanding of what modes of transportation the residents of these areas were utilizing. Pedestrian travel data is critical for measuring and analyzing sustainable transportation systems. Transportation systems are multimodal, and accurate travel data is essential for making informed planning and policy decisions.

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Operations Manager, Chris McCarty, met with Sheila McGraw and Erin King of Arlington Transportation Partners on site prior to data collection to ensure the correct apartment/retail door locations for conducting the surveys. QC field technicians counted the in/out data for pedestrian traffic at the various apartment and retail entrances to these buildings. Pedestrians over the age of 18 were surveyed to obtain the mode-of-transportation used for their arrival and departure from those entrances. The answers included walking, biking, driving, ridesharing, bus, metro and any other mode of transportation that could be written in. These surveys were conducted from 7am to 10am and from 3pm to 7pm on Tuesdays-Thursdays. Data for each specific apartment building was collected on different midweek days over the weeks of 11/7/22 and 11/14/22. Mondays, Fridays and weekends were excluded because they were expected to have substantially different travel patterns than other weekdays.

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These surveys also involved collecting 7-day occupancy counts at the parking garages for each of these apartment buildings over the week of the survey. QC technicians installed several CountCam 3+’s at the entrance to each garage, along with Spack powerPACK units to ensure continuous collection of the entire week. Cameras were installed Saturday 11/5 (11/12) and collected Sunday 11/13 (11/20). Technicians also checked equipment over the course of the week to ensure proper data collection. Technical issues at the Bell at Courthouse location required that we collect the 7-day garage count the following week. This project was completed for $21,200 in November of 2022. QC performed the same survey work at similar locations in Arlington County in the Spring of 2022 and anticipates completing this work again at new locations in the Spring of 2023.

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