Thump-thump. Thump-thump. All those black hoses stretched across roads throughout the region mean state highway officials are doing annual traffic counts in Northwest Arkansas.
The Federal Highway Administration requires the counts that are used for all sorts of planning, modeling and projections by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department and the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission, said Elizabeth Mayfield-Hart with the department's Traffic Information Systems department.
On the Web
Traffic count maps for 2003 through 2014 are available online at: www.arkansashighway…
Annual counts are done about the same time each year on roads that are part of the state system and on selected city streets and county roads, Mayfield-Hart said.
There are two types of counts, a 48-hour traffic volume count and a count that can classify the types of vehicles using a given road.
Counts are done at the same locations during two months, then averaged.
As an example, traffic counts on some parts of Interstate 49 through the metro area were about 50,000 cars a day in 2003 and, by 2014, those same areas were seeing about 79,000 cars a day.
"You want to bring everything back with seasonal factors to an average month," Mayfield-Hart said.
An example of seasonal factors is that there's typically more traffic on a given road in September, when schools are in session, than in January after the holiday shopping ends, she said.
The data collected helps the department design roads, such as deciding how many lanes are needed or which kind of paving to use. It's also used to build a traffic history for a particular road. The data is shared with federal highway officials where it is used, among other things, as part of the formula to apportion highway money among the states.
NW News on 10/04/2015