More travelers head west than east in Sisters

Traffic numbers haven’t changed much during holiday weekends in Sisters, but the direction of travel has.

Public Works Director Gary Frazee collected traffic numbers from key locations around Sisters during Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July weekend.

Borrowing counters from Deschutes County, Frazee had them placed at three strategic locations: Cascade Avenue, Barclay Drive and Camp Polk Road. The counter on Cascade Avenue was placed near the Ski Inn restaurant for Memorial Day weekend.

On Friday of that weekend, the Cascade Avenue counter registered 13,213 vehicles. There were 1,893 more vehicles headed westbound than eastbound for the beginning of the three-day weekend on Friday.

Frazee speculated that there are more people now who leave Central Oregon and travel west of the Cascades to recreate either in the Willamette Valley or at the Oregon Coast.

At the close of both weekends, on Cascade Avenue, more people were headed back to Central Oregon than were headed back to the Willamette Valley.

“Now that’s quite a bit opposite than what it was a few years ago. I’ve heard there is more people from here (Central Oregon) now going to the coast and the valley, than there is coming from over there to here,” Frazee said. “So it’s the total opposite of what it used to be. Like even three years ago, we would have like 1,700 going west (at week’s end) and just a couple hundred going east. So it’s a complete flip-flop. That’s kind of interesting.”

For the Fourth of July weekend, the counter on Cascade Avenue was between Antler Arts and Sisters Veterinary Clinic. It registered the same trend shown on Memorial Day weekend: more people headed west of the Cascades than headed to Central Oregon.

On Friday, July 1, there were 3,665 vehicles that registered for the eastbound direction and 5,269 headed westbound.

During the Memorial Day weekend the traffic counter at the Camp Polk Road location malfunctioned, leaving incomplete data. The exact location of the counter on Camp Polk Road was .10 miles south of Barclay Drive.

For the Fourth of July weekend, Saturday showed the highest count for a total of 2,593 vehicles: 564 southbound and 2,029 northbound. On Monday, 1,613 automobiles registered at the Camp Polk Road counter.

The Barclay Drive counter was located one half mile west of Pine Street for both Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekends. On Friday of Memorial Day weekend the count was 1,085, and on Friday of the Fourth of July weekend the count was 2,028.

The counters can read the direction and speed of the vehicles. Two cables, sensitive to impacts, are stretched out across the road within a specified proximity to each other.

Whichever cable registers impact first determines the direction the automobile is headed. The speed is then calculated by the amount of time it takes for the second impact of the tires.

Average speeds were not provided.