downtown maul

One of the tenets of the "new urbanists" is:

Streets and squares should be safe, comfortable, and interesting to the pedestrian.

We have asked our City to lift the burden of the commercial cut-through traffic abusing our residential neighborhood. The City has responded by instituting a study, They are looking at the speed and volume of traffic.
Speed and volume can be quantified with cables across the road, speed and volume can be measured inexpensively.
I suggest, rather than speed and volume that the City study the origin and destination of the traffic and the tonnage of the traffic. (see excerpts from the City manual)
How might this be done? Alas, it requires human-beings on site, stationed at the entry and exit points of the neighborhood and armed with radios and note-pads.
Perhaps, in lieu of a formal study, someone at the City could send a family member with a baby stroller to walk the 3/10ths of a mile on Woolen Mills Road between with Franklin Street and Meade Avenue? Or, in the alternative, send children on bicycles.

Origin-Destination (O-D) Studies: O-D studies will be conducted when the basic traffic problem relates to excessive cut-through traffic on a particular residential street, or when the problem relates to truck movements through the area. ..It is necessary to use a sufficient number of surveyors to observe all gateways to the neighborhood simultaneously, if a full understanding and documentation of the through traffic problem is to be gained.
(PG 9, City of Charlottesville Traffic Calming device Implementation Guidebook)