Surveyors

[milly143]

When you see people sitting with hi-vis jackets at the side of the road, writing something down on clipboards, what are they actually surveying?

[AlBags]

Doing the crossword .. or looking at Page 3 .. just like any other road maintenance worker these days.

[Buenchico]

(2 part post):

Hey! You've spotted me, have you? ;-)

I work, on an occasional self-employed basis for a firm which specialises in traffic survey work. (I'm a regional supervisor). You'll see, from the list on their website, that they carry out lots of different types of surveys:
http://www.ctstraffic.co.uk/

Many of the surveys (particularly if my team are sat by the side of the road) are 'junction turning counts' where we'll be recording the movements at each junction, classified by vehicle type. For example.we might need to record whether a vehicle is a bicycle, car, taxi (if listed separately from cars), bus, light van, or heavy goods vehicle. We'll also record whether the vehicle turned left, turned right or went straight on.

Some of those traffic counts are for specific purposes. (e.g. a County Council's Highways Department might be considering replacing traffic lights with a roundabout). Others are simply at randomly chosen sites (within fixed criteria) for TRICS:
http://www.trics.org/

[Buenchico]

TRICS provides a database of typical traffic movements. So, for example, a major supermarket group might apply for planning permission for a new store but finds that it faces opposition on the grounds of the volume of traffic which might be generated. The council (and/or the supermarket group) can then access the database of traffic movements at similar stores around the country, to see what's likely to happen if planning permission is granted.

As my first link indicates, we also carry out lots of different types of survey. The most recent one I did was monitoring pedestrians and cyclists using a footpath in Norfolk. That involved counting them and classifying them by age and gender. We also carried out interviews to find out why they were using that footpath. That survey was carried on behalf of Sustrans, who are planning to incorporate that path into a new cycle route:
http://www.sustrans.org.uk/

At other times I've been involved in interviewing pedestrians in Leicester (as part of the city's pedestrianisation scheme) and bus users in Hastings (to collect their views on fares, routes and quality of service).

Chris