Bike-Ped Portal: Making the Most of Nonmotorized Data
In recent years, cities and counties all across the United States have invested in bicycle and pedestrian counters. Having reliable data on non-motorized traffic can help jurisdictions make informed decisions about infrastructure investments, measure the effectiveness of biking and walking initiatives, and improve safety.
But having a bike-ped count program is just the beginning.
Once counts have been collected, cities face new challenges. How can multiple agencies share data among themselves? How can data be standardized and compared? And what is the most effective way to communicate what the numbers mean?
Enter Bike-Ped Portal, the comprehensive non-motorized data management system for manual and automated non-vehicular multi-modal counts housed at Portland State University (PSU). This specialized data lake and management system is designed to make sharing data—within an agency, with partners at other agencies, and with the public—easily accessible. The newest feature we've added is a regional dashboard for the Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA metropolitan area.
DATA QUALITY
Agencies who use Bike-Ped Portal may have counters from different vendors, or use more than one platform to manage data. That's why Bike-Ped Portal is able to accept data in multiple formats, whether that's a spreadsheet with manual counts, output from automated counters, or APIs such as EcoCounter. Once the system receives new data, it is converted into a standardized format. Quality control tools are available, along with the ability to add correction factors and data annotations.
Registered users have access to all the data in Bike-Ped Portal, making it possible to run almost any type of analysis depending on goals and needs. No matter what the end user is looking to analyze, Bike-Ped Portal's quality checks and tools offer confidence that the underlying data is good. Researchers and practitioners can get what they need from one place, making Bike-Ped Portal a "one stop shop" for raw counts, AADNMT (Average Annual Non- Motorized Traffic), data tools, and visualizations.
For one example of what Bike-Ped Portal can do, TREC Adjunct Research Associate Kyu Ri Kim developed a case study exploring the relationship between volumes, crashes, and speeds. See presentation "Where do Bike/Ped Crashes Occur?" Kim presented this project in a meeting of the PORTAL Users Group (PUG), to be held September 5.
CUSTOM TOOLS AND DASHBOARDS
Bike-Ped Portal does more than reduce the time and effort required to manage multiple data sources, format, standardize, validate, and share data openly. TREC's transportation data team can also build custom analytical tools and dashboards to help data tell a story. Transportation Data Program Manager Tammy Lee, and Senior Research Associate Basem Elazzabi, who head up TREC's transportation data program, work with agencies to build tools which meet their specific needs, help reduce redundancies and standardize reporting.
Portland Region Dashboard
Recently added to Bike-Ped Portal is a dashboard for the Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA metropolitan area. To access this dashboard, visit the explore page and select "regions" on the right, then choose the region. Users can see activity on a particular segment broken down by month, year, and day, or use the map to select individual detectors and counters.
Another example of a regional dashboard is one that the Bike-Ped Portal team created for the Washington, D.C. National Capital Region, working with Virginia Tech and the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC). The BikePortal National Capital Region dashboard allows users to see all the region’s bike data together in one place.
GET INVOLVED
Interested in becoming a Bike-Ped Portal user? Reach out to us at bikepedportal@pdx.edu, or sign up to receive emails about upcoming meetings of the Portal Users Group (PUG). Different levels of membership are available, including an edit level with access to edit data; a view level with viewer-only access, or a public user level where any interested researchers can download data for free. Learn more about Bike-Ped Portal and its companion data archive, PORTAL, both housed at Portland State University.
Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is a multidisciplinary hub for all things transportation. We are home to the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), the data programs PORTAL and BikePed Portal, the Better Block PSU program, and PSU's membership in PacTrans, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium. Our continuing goal is to produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education, seminars, and participation in research. To get updates about what's going on at TREC, sign up for our monthly newsletter or follow us at the links below.
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