By AMY RICKER
Great Bend Post
Barton County Engineer, Barry McManaman has requested that a Black Cat II Radar Recorder from Jamar Technologies be purchased at the Barton County Commissioners meeting. McManaman said that the Engineering Department frequently receives requests from citizens to study traffic and/or speed data on County and township roads. This recorder will be able to be mounted on a post in an inconspicuous location.
“It’s not like having someone out there with a radar gun sitting in their pickup gathering speeds. We get the complaint that we’re skewing results because it’s obvious you are sitting out there gathering data, so this helps us a lot in that respect,” McManaman explained.
McManaman says the radar recorder is a 24-hour counter that generates reports in a variety of formats in order to understand the variety of traffic counts and speeds during certain hours of the day.
In the past, radar recorders have been loaned by the Transportation Center at K-U for traffic studies, but the cost to borrow those units cost approximately $800 per study and are not always available when needed.