Geographers often carry out surveys to find out information about places.
Video is one type of evidence we can use to find out about a place.
By looking at some video filmed at the location we can find out about different things, such as what types of traffic go through that area.
Traffic on the Way to School
There are many kinds of traffic on roads in Ireland.
Some vehicles such as articulated trucks are very large. Others like motorbikes are quite small.
Sometimes there are lots of vehicles using the roads at particular times especially in the morning and evening.
This is called rush-hour traffic.
Some places have heavy traffic all day long. This is especially so if the place has a main road running through it.
Sometimes new roads are built to solve this traffic problem. Sometimes roads are closed and an area is pedestrianised.
You can calculate the number of vehicles which pass an area at a particular time of day by doing a survey and recording the numbers of each type of vehicle that you see.
By doing a survey at different times you can work out when there is most traffic.
We will now look at some video of Raheny and use what we see in the video to help us to conduct a survey about the traffic there.
Let's look at the traffic in Raheny for our survey
Let's look at the traffic in Raheny for our survey
Fill in the grid below for your traffic survey:
Fill in the grid below for your traffic survey:
Modes of Transport
After you have filled in the grid above you can print out and use the information to make a graph of your findings.
Using the information you wrote in the grid, or by looking at your graph, answer the following questions below:- What did you notice was the most common form of transport?
- What was the largest type of transport that you saw and what was the smallest?
- Look at the video clip again. Note the number of cars that seemed to pass the junction in 20 seconds. Calculate the average number which would pass in a minute.
- What time of the day do you think that the video clip shows? Was it at a peak time? Give reasons from your answer.
- Vehicles can be used to transport people as well as to transport goods or animals. What were most of the vehicles carrying?
- From looking at the video clip why do you think most people were making journeys?
Think about it
Do you think traffic can be a problem for children who walk or cycle to school?
Can you think of any ways for solving traffic problems?