Trail Ramblings: A Guest Post By Board Member Connor Herbert

This morning, I had to Uber to the office because my car broke down on the highway yesterday. In the Uber, we got to talking about Lincoln Transportation and Utilities, and my Uber driver began to rail on the Haymarket, the N Street Bike Path, and failed plans to make P street a two-way.

I politely informed him that, with respect to the Haymarket, the issue sounded more like a financial interest issue in the city and that, with respect to the N Street Bike Path, having seen the statistics myself for 2024, approximately 60,000 people a year used it. He said I was lying!

EcoCounter, founded 15 years ago, is the most trusted provider of infrastructure data collection services in North America and Europe. Planners used to have to rely on one to multi-day counts where they would set up a chair and count passersby one-by-one for traffic counts. No more!

https://www.eco-counter.com/developing-active-transportation/monitoring-active-transportation-trends

With the services of companies like EcoCounter becoming more accessible to planning and transportation departments across the country, cities can plan with real-time and accurate data and rely less on scaled averages. This means that as cities perform demand management controls in traffic planning they can identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement in ways that they simply could not before.

To return to my Uber driver’s claim that I was lying⎯ his anecdotal evidence, by the way, was that he worked in an office on N Street for two years and that you would be lucky if you saw four people using the N Street path, I know, and the city knows, how many people use N Street Bike Path due to sensors that are used there and in other places around the city to track traffic. These are essential devices for the purpose of continuing to advocate for sensible active transportation investments that both improve the network and, by supplying infrastructure, promote demand. That means more people enjoying quality of life improvements that are leading Lincoln into a shining example of bike friendliness in the region.