The FoCW have fitted a people counter at the Southern end of Centurion Way. This is so we can document the number of people using the path and use the figures to argue for the preservation of walking and cycling opportunities in the area. The Southern end of Centurion Way is threatened by local housing development plans may turn the land our path occupies into a busy access road for motor-vehicles to access the new development. This is likely to severely limit opportunities for walking and cycling in the West of Chichester.
To make sure the figures recorded by the FoCW counter are credible, we are verifying the automated count. We are doing this by running a number of parallel human made counts so that we can demonstrate our counter system is producing reliable and trustworthy data.
On Tuesday the 13th Jan 2021 friends of Centurion Way members Julia Smith and Mark Record counted the number of people on the path between 10:06 Am and 10:36 Am.
Julia counted 12 people heading Northbound and Mark counted only 9 heading Southbound.
The automated people counter registered 13 people heading Northbound (an unusual slight over-count of 1) and 8 people heading Southbound.
Over the same period of time, the total of number of people registered by the counter tallied 100% with the human made count but with a discrepancy of 1 person being attributed a differing direction of travel.
This shows the FoCW beam counter is giving a good estimate of the volume of people using the path and also a good indication of the direction these people are travelling.
Because it was a cold drizzly winter morning, few people were venturing outside to use the path.
Julia now has a kit of equipment that allows her to download and read the data from the counter!
A chart of this years daily use of the counter up until 4 PM on the 15th Jan 2021 is shown below.
