Twice a year, the City of Columbia seeks out volunteers to help conduct our routine Pedestrian & Bicyclist Counts within the City’s limits. By counting pedestrians and people riding bicycles, volunteers help to ensure that all of the City’s residents count. Transit riders, pedestrians, and people riding bicycles are often not accounted for in traffic studies – the same traffic studies used to make important decisions about our City’s landscape and streetscape.
The City’s Planning Division selects key locations that are heavily utilized by pedestrians and those riding bicycles, have been the sites where vulnerable users have experienced serious injuries and fatalities, or are locations where changes to the streetscape or surrounding land use are likely to result in changes to modes of travel. By collecting data routinely, on both weekdays and weekends, we are able to provide valuable and robust feedback to the many agencies that plan for our roadways. This count process helps planners and transportation agencies better understand who uses the City’s roadways, streets and sidewalks included, and how they use them. With a greater understanding of people’s behavior through each count, this data allows for better planning and policy efforts that inspire people-oriented places, safer walkable and bikeable streetscape designs, and safe and accessible means to various modes of transportation.
Volunteer to count as many times as you please! Nine time slots are available, and each of the 35 locations must be counted once on a weekday and once on a Saturday, which means 70 slots must be filled to complete the count in full! Volunteers can select from a list of count locations and will count pedestrians and cyclists at one location for two hours.
WHAT: City of Columbia Pedestrian & Bicyclist Counts
WHEN: Volunteer to count as many times as you please! Nine time slots are available, and each of the 35 locations must be counted once on a weekday and once on a Saturday:
- Saturday, September 12, 10:00AM-12:00PM (noon)
- Tuesday, September 15, 7:30-9:30AM
- Wednesday, September 16, 7:30-9:30AM
- Thursday, September 17, 7:30-9:30AM
- Saturday, September 19, 10:00AM-12:00PM (noon)
- Tuesday, September 22, 7:30-9:30AM
- Wednesday, September 23, 7:30-9:30AM
- Thursday, September 24, 7:30-9:30AM
- Saturday, September 26, 10:00AM-12:00PM (noon)
WHERE: Please visit City of Columbia’s Pedestrian, Bicyclist, & Transit Resources page for more information and to sign up.
WHO: Open to the public
To sign up, please visit City of Columbia’s Pedestrian, Bicyclist, & Transit Resources page. If you have questions regarding the routine Pedestrian and Bicyclist Count effort, contact the Planning Division at 803-545-3222. Reporting and analysis for past counting efforts can be found on our resources page as well.
For information on the City’s Planning efforts, including the Walk Bike Columbia Pedestrian & Bicycle Master Plan and the Walkable 29203 Pedestrian Master Plan, visit https://planninganddevelopment.columbiasc.gov/city-plans/.