Chestermere City Council was presented with the Rainbow Road traffic count during the March 1 Regular Meeting of Council.
City administration was directed to place two Houston Radar Armadillo trackers on Rainbow Road.
The north counter is located less than one kilometre south of the Trans-Canada Highway, and the south counter is 1.15 kilometres south of the Trans-Canada Highway.
The tracker uses Doppler radar technology to collect bi-directional speed, traffic volume, and vehicle class. The tracker produces a beam angle to track multiple vehicles travelling in adjacent lanes, the council report said.
“When the barriers were removed from Rainbow Road, we installed two trackers that we use to do traffic counting,” manager of roads and fleet community operations,” Mel Bohmer said.
Data was collected from Jan. 7 to Jan. 27. The north counter collected data for 20 days, while the south counter collected data for 16 days. City administration is assuming the beam was off centre and couldn’t pick up traffic on the south counter.
The daily traffic totals for the north counter picked up 12,805, while the south counter picked up 7,846 vehicles.
After reviewing the data, it was determined that the peak time for vehicles travelling northbound to the Trans-Canada Highway was between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., and the peak time for southbound traffic heading towards Chestermere Blvd. was between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m.
The average speeds on the north counter collected an average speed of 46 km/h, and southbound 45 km/h.
“It’s well under the range of the speed limit in that area, which is 50 km/h,” Bohmer said.
The south counter collected an average speed of about 57 km/h travelling northbound, and 56 km/h travelling southbound.
“The daily average speed is constant throughout the week,” Bohmer said. “It’s clear that people are travelling from Calgary, turning down Rainbow Road, and heading south because our north counter is picking up more going that way.”
The counters also collected data on 202 speeders travelling between 80 km/h to 104 km/h.
“There wasn’t a peak time where most people were speeding, it was all over the map,” Bohmer said.
The city is using the data collected in January as a baseline, as the road has just been opened for the first time.
During the time the data was collected, the road required normal maintenance, with some increased levels of dust after grader maintenance was completed during dry weather.
Administration will continue to report back to council monthly.
