PORTLAND, Maine — Small birds chirped and twittered in the bare bushes along the Fore River walking trail at Thompson’s Point on Wednesday. A mourning dove moaned somewhere nearby and a woodpecker tapped its one-note song on an oak growing along the salt marsh inlet.
Nearby, across a dirt parking lot, the Downeaster train pulled into the station. Its low rumbling mixed with the sounds of a railroad crossing bell and puffing air brakes.
Not far away, a silent sentinel sat motionless, waiting.
A hiker then approached, coming up the gravel path. Passing the sentinel, the pedestrian broke an unseen beam of light and their presence was duly noted.
The sentinel is an electronic “people counter” placed along the path by Portland Trails, the nonprofit organization that helps oversee the more than 70 miles of public walking paths in the city. The small black box, attached to a sapling with a hose clamp, resembles a game camera but isn’t one, recording only the number of people passing. It’s one of a handful of such devices deployed to give the organization a better idea of how many humans are using Portland’s trail system.
“Right now we have three of them and two more are on the way,” said Portland Trails Executive Director Kara Wooldrik of the new, portable devices.
In addition to the Thompson’s Point counter, there is also one deployed on the Jewell Falls Trail.
The devices shoot an infrared beam across the trail. When a walker or cycler breaks the beam, they are counted. Placed about four feet off the ground, small children and dogs are not recorded.
“Not unless your dog is massive,” Wooldrik said. “It’s getting kids probably six years old and up.”
Portland Trails has had permanent counters installed on its popular Eastern Prom and Baxter Boulevard trails for six years. Last year, the prom counter recorded about 450,000 people and the boulevard saw around 350,000.
Using those numbers, Wooldrik’s organization was able to estimate the entire trail system saw over a million users — but that was just an educated guess.
With five new portable counters, plus the two permanent ones, Portland Trails will be able to get a much better idea of how many people are on each trail.
That information will help the organization know where to better spend its time and resources, Wooldrik said.
Portland Trails is not the only Maine trail organization using the devices.
“We’ve been using them for over a year now,” said Ryan Gates, stewardship program director at the Coastal Mountain Land Trust in Belfast.
Gates’ organization uses infrared beam style counters as well as ones tripped by large metal objects such as cars and bicycles. The added information helps the land trust count bikes versus people and also record the number of vehicles using its parking lots.
Both the land trust and Portland Trails tried to head off anyone mistaking the counters for game cameras from the start.
“We put a label on the outside,” Gates said, “and I wrote right on it that it wasn’t a camera.”
Portland Trails took to social media.
“We are collecting data on trail usage throughout our network that will help us measure the effectiveness of trail projects as well as advocate for people-powered transportation infrastructure,” the organization wrote on Facebook, accompanying a photo of a counter. “We ask that you leave them be.”
It’s illegal to place a game camera or counting device on private property without written permission of a landowner in Maine.
So far, neither organization has fielded many angry or misguided comments.
“Wait wait, so my epic wheelie down Fore River’s trailhead was not recorded?” wrote one good-natured online comenter in answer to Portland Trails’ post. “I’m not doing it again!”
Gates said he’s been pleasantly surprised by the lack of controversy, adding he understands and wouldn’t want to be photographed by a game camera on the trail, himself.
“We were expecting grumpy phone calls,” he said, “but we haven’t had that many.”
