Robust bicycle and pedestrian data on a national scale would serve numerous purposes. Access to a centralized nonmotorized traffic count archive can open the door for innovation through research, design and planning; provide safety researchers with a measure of exposure; provide fundamental performance metrics for planning and funding decisions; and allow policymakers and transportation professionals to better support the public’s desire for livable communities. Numerous jurisdictions have initiated nonmotorized traffic count programs. However, many agencies and policymakers, who need data to support investment decisions, are in locations without a centralized count program. This lack of access to count data may lead some decision-makers, planners and engineers to assume that cycling and walking levels are close enough to zero to be ignored. Providing reliable numbers may reveal a surprising amount of walking and bicycling is taking place.

In order to organize and promote the collection of nonmotorized traffic data, a team of transportation professionals and computer scientists has created a national nonmotorized traffic count archive called Bike-Ped Portal. This archive enables data sharing by centralizing both continuous and short-duration traffic counts in an online archive. While other archives exist, this is the first that is both national in scope and enables data to be directly uploaded to the site. This archive includes online input, basic data quality and visualization functions, and the ability to download user-specified data. In addition, the archive has an API and a demonstration site for training new data wranglers, and is able to transfer count data directly from one vendor database (Eco-Counter’s Eco-Visio).