For the last five years, our team has been studying the planning and development challenges of small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities. Our prior and ongoing NITC funded research shows that these “gateway communities”–which comprise a significant portion of the rural West, constituting about 31% of all communities in the U.S. Mountain West and more than 60% of those under 25,000 people–are experiencing rapid growth and increased tourism. This has… Read More

Counts provide the foundation for measuring nonmotorized travel along a link or a network and are also useful for monitoring trends, planning new infrastructure, and for conducting safety, health, and economic analyses. Most agencies still use manual counting methods, however over the last decade, several automated technologies have been developed to count bicyclists and pedestrians. Due to cost and other resource considerations, permanent counts are still limited to small subsets of networks… Read More