PORT ANGELES — The state Department of Transportation will install three bicycle and pedestrian counters on the Olympic Discovery Trail west of Port Angeles.
Commissioners approved a grant request, maintenance agreement and separate local agency agreement with Transportation for the counters Tuesday. The department agreed to install the $16,935 sensors at no cost to the county.
The equipment will help the county apply for future grants and measure the success of the ODT in attracting visitors and helping the local economy, county officials said.
The permanent sensors will be installed at the Elwha River crossing west of Port Angeles, the Spruce Railroad Trail at Lake Crescent and near Cooper Ranch Road on the county’s West End.
They are scheduled to be installed in September and be operational in October, according to a project summary.
“Since we got a counter in last year at the [Port Angeles] Red Lion, we’ve been pretty amazed at the counts we’re getting for the trail,” Transportation Program Manager Rich James told commissioners last week.
“It’s averaging almost 200,000 a year.”
The Cascade Bicycle Club of Seattle applied for a grant from the state Department of Transportation to make the Eco-Counter trail counters available to local agencies, James said.
The club was “very favorable” to Clallam County’s application, he added.
The grant requires a $5,040 county match for four years of automatic data transmission. Clallam County also is required to maintain the trail counters and share the data for five years.
Each counter has a magnetic loop buried under the trail and a heat-sensing counter above the trail.
“With this combined system, you can count both pedestrians and bikes and distinguish between them, which is pretty useful,” James said.
“We were pretty amazed at how many walkers we have using the trail down at Red Lion. They outnumber the bicyclists.”
The existing trail counter on the Port Angeles waterfront is near the east end of the Red Lion Hotel.
“These units have a modem that we would be ordering with it,” James said.
“That modem keeps that information, makes it available through the web and to this Eco-Counter system website. So you go on a state site and actually see what the counts are at the various locations.”
The Elwha River sensor is to be placed near the county’s 8-year-old Elwha River bridge. The Olympic Discovery Trail is suspended under the bridge.
The Lake Crescent sensor is to be installed near the east end of the Spruce Railroad Trail at the Lyre River trailhead.
“That’s going to be problematic for a year or two until the project’s done, but definitely a good place to have a counter in the future,” James said, referring to the Spruce Railroad Trail and tunnel restoration project.
Clallam County is working with the National Park Service to realign, widen and pave the 4-mile-long Spruce Railroad Trail.
Once completed in 2019, the Spruce Railroad Trail will become part of the Olympic Discovery Trail.
The third sensor is to be placed at the Trail Camp Creek trailhead near Cooper Ranch Road in the Sol Duc River Valley.
Clallam County, which has been developing the Olympic Discovery Trail since 1993, is working to close gaps in the trail between the Elwha River and Lake Crescent and in the greater Forks area.
Most of the trail between the Elwha River and the Jefferson County line has been completed.
The Olympic Discovery Trail will eventually connect Port Townsend to La Push.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News Joggers pass over a sensor imbedded in the pavement that tallies foot and bicycle traffic on the Waterfront Trail east of Port Angeles City Pier.
