LINCOLN – The Nebraska Department of Transportation launched a new way to gauge the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on Nebraska.

A new traffic count dashboard has been added to a state website. It features traffic data since March 1.

Traffic volumes for the week of April 12 to 18 were down 35 percent compared to the average from 2016 to 2018.

NDOT Director Kyle Schneweis said the traffic count dashboard is a tool to help the transportation department communicate how COVID-19 is impacting travel in Nebraska.

Schneweis: ““While we are seeing freight traffic stay at near normal levels, a 35 percent decrease in statewide traffic volume poses potential impacts to how the NDOT does business.  It is too early to estimate the extent of impact but we’ll continue to analyze the data to understand scenarios.”

The data compares 2020’s traffic to the historical three year (2016-18) average daily traffic for each day of the week for that month and then averages the difference in traffic for each week by category. 

Data for 2019 was excluded due to the impacts of flooding on highways. For example, March 15-21 is calculated by finding the difference in March 15, 2020 vs. the historical average Sunday traffic for March, March 16  2020 vs. the historic average Monday in March, etc.  Then each day is averaged together to get a weekly average change in traffic.

 

The column descriptions are as follows:

  • Rural Highway are all non-interstate roads in areas under 5,000 population.
  • Omaha Streets & Highways include all non-interstate roads in Douglas and Sarpy counties.
  • Lincoln Streets & Highways include all non-interstate roads in Lancaster County.
  • Remaining Small Urban Streets & Highways are all roads in cities with over 5,000 population outside of Douglas, Sarpy, and Lancaster counties.  (This includes I-129).
  • Statewide Total is a weighted average of all categories

Traffic County Dashboard