Have you been noticing pairs of cables stretching across some of the major roads on the Isle of Wight? Well, you’re not alone. Quite a few people have contacted OnTheWight asking if we can find out what’s going on.
Isle of Wight council have been really helpful in fill in the answers.
What do they do?
They’re called ‘monitoring tubes’ and have been put down for two weeks to monitor traffic flows – ie how many vehicles pass those points at various times of the day.
The information they gather will be used “to assist with future strategic planning.”
Where are they?
The locations is one piece of information the council won’t give away – their reasoning? “To ensure a typical generalised picture of traffic flows is gathered.”
We think this means that they imagine if people know where they are, people will go to these site and continually drive over them to make it look like traffic is more heavy in those areas? Seems unlikely to us that people would have the time or inclination.
All they’d let out is that “the exercise does involve the majority of the key routes” and that there are 40 of them dotted around the Island. There are another 360 across Hampshire.
Who’s doing it?
“Consultants acting on behalf of Solent Transport – a sub-regional transport partnership involving the Isle of Wight Council, Hampshire County Council and Southampton and Portsmouth city councils,” is what OnTheWight has been told.
Do they measure speed too?
The council says they don’t.
