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Parks staff presents one-year utilization baseline; recommends geofencing for more accurate counts
Summary
City parks staff presented a year-plus of reservation and traffic-counter data showing seasonality and limitations of physical counters; staff recommended geofencing and continued targeted counts to better measure park use.
City parks staff presented a Parks Utilization Report at the Jan. 28 Parks and Open Space Board meeting, summarizing reservations, seasonal patterns and traffic‑counter results and recommending improvements to data collection.
The presenter told the board the study began at the direction of a council member and the Parks Board and now includes a full year (and a little more) of compiled reservations and traffic-counter data. Staff noted that reservation records represent a floor — many park uses are informal and therefore unrecorded on the reservation sheet. "These numbers really are a floor and not a ceiling," the presenter said, explaining that especially for pavilion spaces many users simply show up without reserving.
Traffic counters at Kenneth R. Lewis Park showed weekday-to-weekend fluctuations with peak days driven by scheduled field use; staff reported average daily vehicle counts that ranged from roughly 13 on low days to about 24 on peak days. A second counter at the East Winnicoff Trailhead was damaged during construction staging and staff excluded that dataset as unreliable.
To improve accuracy and learn visitor origin/destination patterns, staff recommended experimenting with geofencing (aggregated, anonymized cell‑location data) and limited, targeted counter deployments rather than leaving hardware exposed year-round. Staff noted geofencing provides anonymized dots of movement and can indicate where visitors come from, while acknowledging differences from physical counter measurements.
Board members asked follow-up questions about seasonal patterns and bathroom availability; staff said Kenneth Lewis Park restrooms are closed for winter to avoid repeated pipe breaks and will reopen after freeze risk subsides. The board encouraged staff to continue refining the methodology and to return with a log of any further counter results or geofencing pilot findings.
Next steps: staff will scope a geofencing pilot and recommend a refined traffic-count schedule to present at a future meeting.
