Bath and North East Somerset Council monitors transport within the authority area to:

• Establish an historic database of traffic movements 
• Assess trends and changes in traffic patterns
• Judge the impact of development proposals and assist with future planning
• Measure and monitor public transport demand and usage
• Measure progress towards achieving targets, particularly in relation to the Local Transport Plan
• Satisfy demand for travel data which may inform more detailed studies e.g. environmental improvement schemes

Typical surveys undertaken by the team include the following:

• Long and short term monitoring of traffic volumes and classifications
• Monitoring traffic speeds
• Measuring vehicle journey times · "before and after" surveys for particular projects and schemes
• Pedestrian and cyclist surveys
• Passenger transport counts and surveys, including bus, train and park and ride

The long term data is collected by automatic traffic recorders installed on all major routes in  the Authority area. Temporary recorders are used for the monitoring of speeds whilst manual surveys are carried out by our team of 18 traffic enumerators.