Incorporating Weather

Abstract

“Annual average daily bicyclists traffic” (AADBT) is a term commonly used in various cycling-related research and practical applications. The AADBT value is usually estimated by averaging the daily cyclist totals recorded with a long-term automatic counter or by using such a counter to extrapolate short-term counts. The latter method, often referred to as the expansion factor method, produces estimates with considerable error. In an effort to mitigate this error, two AADBT estimation methods were proposed: one that uses a cycling weather model to adjust short-term counts and one that is based on individual daily totals from long-term counts (as opposed to annual averages by day or by month). These methods were compared with two traditional expansion factor methods. The weather and disaggregate methods outperformed the traditional methods, which produced an average absolute relative error of roughly 11% when based on 1 day of short-term data.