The City of Guelph is asking residents not to disturb any unfamiliar rubber tubing they may find on city streets and bike lanes.

The tubes are part of the city's Active Transportation Data Collection program to count both cyclists and pedestrians traffic at various sites in the city.

In a tweet posted Sunday, the city asked residents to leave the counters "in place, undisturbed."

Embed | Twitter

Open Full Embed in New Tab Loading external pages may require significantly more data usage.

"We have two on-road counters that count cyclists on the roadway [and] two infra-red counters that detect body heat and are used on trails, boulevard paths and sidewalks," Jennifer Juste, program manager with Guelph's Transportation Services department, told CBC News.

The city will be collecting the data from now until November in order to keep track of changes in pedestrian and cycling traffic around Guelph.

"If [a site] is scheduled for construction, we try to get a 'before' count prior to new cycling infrastructure or trail going in," Juste said.

When a new bike lane or trail is completed, the city will then collect "after" data to see if user traffic has changed.

Juste said the city also wants to measure changes on hiking trails and popular routes like the Gordon Street bike lanes.