While cycling in the west end, I came across these plastic gizmos nailed down to the asphalt street surface. They were on several different blocks. They have a directional arrow, and there was always one pointing in each direction of traffic.

Turns out they are new style traffic counters. Instead of using a cable that crosses the street and a passing vehicle activates the counter, these new ones sense the magnetic field of a passing vehicle.

Some models of the new counters are capable of sorting vehicles by some criteria, but no word on whether Ottawa’s version does this. Nor was I able to find out if the counters count bikes, or how close a cyclist had to be to the counter.

I made sure to run right over them on each passing.

The counters are of the ‘Nu-metrics Hi-Star’ type, probably unit NC-97.