Skip to main content

Cycle counter installed on Seattle’s popular Fremont Bridge

A new cycle counter on the north end of the Fremont Bridge in Seattle will help the city gather better data about bike traffic along one of the city's most popular routes for two-wheeled commuters, Seattle Department of Transport (SDOT) officials say. Supplied by European company Eco-counter, an Eco Totem, a seven-foot high totem with electronic counter that uses sensors in the road to count cycles in both directions, and feed a real-time digital display of that number during the day. The year-to-date total
October 15, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
A new cycle counter on the north end of the Fremont Bridge in Seattle will help the city gather better data about bike traffic along one of the city's most popular routes for two-wheeled commuters, Seattle Department of Transport (SDOT) officials say.

Supplied by European company 6713 Eco-counter, an Eco Totem, a seven-foot high totem with electronic counter that uses sensors in the road to count cycles in both directions, and feed a real-time digital display of that number during the day. The year-to-date total also will be displayed. "Data from the counter will be transmitted electronically and will be available on a web site," SDOT said.

"The location on the Fremont Bridge is ideal because this is the busiest bridge for bike traffic in the city and the state, and there is a good mix of commute and recreational trips through the area," said Chuck Ayers, executive director of Seattle’s Cascade's cycle club. "We are delighted to help bring a cycle counter to Seattle to show that bicycling counts here."

The counter will collect 24/7 cycle count data on one of the city's most-used cycle routes and provide better data on cycle use and demand. "Our goal as stated in the 2007 Seattle Bicycle Master Plan has been to triple the number of bicyclists between 2007 and 2017," SDOT Director Peter Hahn said. "This new bike counter will help promote bicycling and will let us better measure the progress we're making."

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Data collection becoming a crowded market
    October 26, 2017
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
  • Why integrated traffic management needs a cohesive approach
    April 10, 2012
    Traffic control is increasingly being viewed as one essential element of a wider ‘system of systems’ – the smart city. Jason Barnes, Jon Masters and David Crawford report on latest ideas and efforts for making cities ‘smarter’ Virtually every element of the fabric and utilitarian operations that make urban areas tick can now be found somewhere in the mix that is the ‘smart city’ agenda. Ideas have expanded and projects pursued in different directions as the rhetoric on making cities ‘smarter’ has grown. App
  • Bogotá’s affordable path to safer roads
    April 28, 2022
    Enforcing speed limits on key corridors is a cost-effective way of reducing collisions in the Colombian capital, say the authors of a new study. Andrew Stone talks to them
  • Traffic sensors give cyclists green lights
    February 1, 2013
    Transport officials in Columbus, Ohio, are following in the footsteps of Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon and Berkeley, California and recalibrating their traffic signal sensors to accommodate the growing number of cyclists in the city. Nearly all the city’s 1,000 traffic lights are connected to road sensors that detect the presence of vehicles at the intersections and adjust the lights accordingly. Cycles are another story; they don’t contain enough metal to trigger the sensor. This has caused some cyclis