We need your help! Island Park / Byron traffic analysis

Traffic problems that result in unsafe pedestrian and cycling environments are endemic, unfortunately, across the ward. We deal in the office daily with one-offs, neighbourhood level issues, and try as much as we have time to deal with systemic challenges. One intersection that's frequently flagged for me is the Island Park/Byron junction. Anecdotally, we hear often about red-light running, cars blocking the intersection, curb-jumping and more. 

Quantitative evidence to describe the problems on our streets is in short supply. On Friday, November 13, I went out and set up a camera at the corner and filmed from 7:45 - 9 am: the morning peak. It was a cloudy day with a smattering of mist, but basically clear. In just that 75 minutes, I saw lots of evidence of the problems that people have been describing to me.

To quantify those problems, I'm asking for your help. Local resident Kevin O'Donnell has developed a crowdsourcing engine to make analyzing behaviour in the intersection a snap. The video's been carved into short segments (one signal phase each), and we're asking residents for help to tell us what they see. We're counting cars, bikes and pedestrians, and noting challenges along the way.

Please take a minute to watch one of the clips and follow the instructions to give us some much-needed data! Better yet, watch and report on a few! The engine is at http://app.kevino.ca/traffic-video/.

A quick word about methodology. This is a proof-of-concept. If it works, I'll be filming more intersections, and filming the same intersections multiple times. Anecdotally, I think the IPD/Byron intersection has more problems than this video shows. It was a slow Friday morning, and I've heard from some people that traffic was light that day. As we seek to find ways of better arguing for more and improved safety improvements, this is one piece. I look forward to getting your feedback at jeff.leiper@ottawa.ca. This is a crowdsourcing effort (like the ongoing ibikeibuy.ca effort that will be expanded next year), and I'm counting on participants to be objective.

My thanks to Kevin for his (volunteer) work on this. He's a rock star.