April 22, 2020 (Lincoln, Neb.) — Today, the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) launched a new Traffic Count Dashboard as an informational resource for Nebraskans.
The NDOT has been reporting traffic data since March 1 to track the impact of COVID-19 on statewide traffic volumes. For the week of April 12 through April 18, statewide traffic volumes were down 35 percent compared to the 2016-2018 average.
The Traffic Count Dashboard will be updated weekly and can be viewed using the following link: https://gis.ne.gov/portal/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/4473552a18f34645ad0dede3ae1105ce
The data compares 2020’s traffic to the historical three year (2016-18) average daily traffic for each day of the week for that month and then averages the difference in traffic for each week by category. Data for 2019 was excluded due to the impacts of flooding on highways. For example, March 15-21 is calculated by finding the difference in March 15, 2020, vs. the historical average Sunday traffic for March, March 16, 2020, vs. the historic average Monday in March, etc. Then each day is averaged together to get a weekly average change in traffic.
- The column descriptions are as follows:
- Rural Highway are all non-interstate roads in areas under 5,000 population.
- Omaha Streets & Highways include all non-interstate roads in Douglas and Sarpy counties.
- Lincoln Streets & Highways include all non-interstate roads in Lancaster County.
- Remaining Small Urban Streets & Highways are all roads in cities with over 5,000 population outside of Douglas, Sarpy, and Lancaster counties. (This includes I-129).
Statewide Total is a weighted average of all categories. The NDOT maintains a system of 67 continuous traffic counters statewide. These are often called automatic traffic recorders (ATRs). These counters collect traffic volume and classification data 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Data is then relayed to NDOT twice per week.
For more information/data about ATRs and links to the Annual ATR and March 2020 reports: https://dot.nebraska.gov/media/3811/annual-traffic-count-data.pdf https://dot.nebraska.gov/media/7569/autotrfrecorddata.pdf