cables running parallel on road

mondeo

I have seen this alot and I don't know what the purpose of them are... Two black cables running parallel across the road which connect into a little black box on the grass verge. What are they?

Thanks

dirtydiesel

Ive seen them too, no idea what they are, I was wondering could they be connected to some sort of sensor that detects how much traffic is passing?

Mc Love

They are a part of some survey being carried out by govt. Get ready for long delays in the morning when the clipboard army come out in force. They were in Limerick not too long ago.

Stoolbend

I think you're right.

Stephen

Yeah, they're traffic counters.

cian1500ww

They count the amount of vehicles on the road and their respective weights afaik.

owenmul

they count traffic, i didnt think they measured weight tho, that was never mentioned in college when we were doing traffic counting stuff, may it does...

Engineers can calculate the numbers of cars travelling on that stretch of road then and convert it to Annual Average Daily Traffice (AADT) by some process that eludes me at the minute and compare it to other year's count to see if there is any variation on the routes been used and as a result carry out upgrades to other routes or carry out maintenance i'd imagine.

if anybody wants to correct this, feel free I can't remember the exact ins and outs entirely:)

if ya want to know more about AADT and it's uses here ya go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadt

Voodoomelon

mondeo wrote: »

I have seen this alot and I don't know what the purpose of them are... Two black cables running parallel across the road which connect into a little black box on the grass verge. What are they?

Thanks

Don't suppose you're in Dundalk? They've put them in bloody everywhere over the week. Everyones slowing down and staring at them...

corktina

cian1500ww wrote: »

They count the amount of vehicles on the road and their respective weights afaik.

simply a counter...

kluivert

Voodoomelon wrote: »

Don't suppose you're in Dundalk? They've put them in bloody everywhere over the week. Everyones slowing down and staring at them...

Thats true. I have seen a few of them starting to come loose.

**Timbuk2**

They're all over the place in Dundalk - I assume they're for counting the volume of traffic.

[nerdhat]They're actually running perpendicular to the road, not paralell[/nerdhat]

joewicklow

[/QUOTE]

[nerdhat]They're actually running perpendicular to the road, not paralell[/nerdhat][/QUOTE]

I think the OP meant that the two cables are running parallel to each other!

pickarooney

I make a point of pulling a wheelie over these each time I pass, to boost the figures for unicycles.

corktina

pickarooney wrote: »

I make a point of pulling a wheelie over these each time I pass, to boost the figures for unicycles.

make sure you do it an uneven number of times, otherwise they wont be counted as unicycles...:D