pedestrian safety | National Institute for Transportation and Communities

Pedestrian Crossings, Bicycling and Transit Stop Removal: 3 Transportation Research Board annual meeting student presentations

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Summaries:

Evaluating Driver and Pedestrian Behaviors at Enhanced Multilane Midblock Pedestrian Crossings: Case Study in Portland, Oregon This study examines driver and pedestrian behaviors at two enhanced midblock pedestrian crossings in Portland, Oregon. One crossing is on a five-lane arterial with a posted speed of 35/45 miles-per-hour (MPH) and features six rectangular rapid flash beacon (RRFB) assemblies and a narrow median refuge. The other crossing is on a suburban arterial with four travel lanes and a two-way left-turn lane. The crossing is enhanced with four RRFB assemblies and a median island with a “Z” crossing, or Danish offset, designed to encourage pedestrians to face oncoming traffic before completing the second stage of their crossing. Approximately 62 hours of video have been collected at the two locations. A total of 351 pedestrian crossings are analyzed for driver compliance (yielding) rates, pedestrian...

Streets For Everyone: Making the Public Right-of-Way Accessible

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Rerouting Mode Choice Models: How Including Realistic Route Options Can Help Us Understand Decisions to Walk or Bike

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Rerouting Mode Choice Models

For a number of reasons—congestion, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, demographic shifts, and community livability to name a few—the importance of walking and bicycling as transportation options will only continue to increase. Currently, policy interest and infrastructure funding for nonmotorized modes far outstrip our ability to successfully model bike and walk travel. In the past five years, we have learned a lot about where people prefer to bike and walk, but what can that tell us about whether people will bike or walk in the...

Making Urban Transport Sustainable: Comparison of Germany and the USA

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Abstract: Reliance on the automobile for most trips contributes to costly trends like pollution, oil dependence, congestion, and obesity. Germany and the U.S. have among the highest motorization rates in the world. Yet Germans make a four times higher share of trips by foot, bike, and public transport and drive for a 25 percent lower share of trips.

This presentation first investigates international trends in daily travel behavior with a focus on Germany and the USA. Next, the presentation examines the transport and land-use policies in Germany over the last 40 years that have encouraged more walking, bicycling, and public transport use. Using a case study of policy changes in the German city of Freiburg, the presentation concludes with policies that are transferable to car-oriented countries around the world.

Bio: Ralph Buehler is Assistant Professor of Urban Affairs & Planning and a Faculty Fellow with the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, VA. Originally from Germany, most of his research has an international comparative perspective, contrasting transport and land-use policies, transport systems, and travel behavior in Western Europe and North America. His research falls into three areas: (1) the influence of transport policy, land use, socio- demographics on travel behavior; (2) bicycling, walking, and public health; and (3) public transport...

Webinar: Understanding the Socio-Psychological Factors Affecting Active Travel to School

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Findings from a Quasi-Experimental Study of Boltage Encouragement Programs

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Lessons from the Development of a Guidebook on Pedestrian and Bicycle Connections to Transit

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Lessons from the Development of a Guidebook on Pedestrian and Bicycle Connections to Transit

To improve safety and increase transit use, transit agencies and the jurisdictions they serve have to approach transit service as door-to-door not just stop-to-stop.

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Pedestrians in Regional Travel Demand Forecasting Models: State-of-the-Practice

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It has been nearly 25 years since non-motorized modes and non-motorized-specific built environment measures were first included in the regional travel demand models of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Such modeling practices have evolved considerably as data collection and analysis methods improve, decisions-makers demand more policy-responsive tools, and walking and cycling grow in popularity. Many models now explicitly consider the unique characteristics of walking travel, separate from travel by bicycle. As MPOs look to enhance their models’ representations of pedestrian travel, the need to understand current and emerging practice is great.

This project presents a comprehensive review of the practice of representing walking in MPO travel models. A review of model documentation determined that – as of mid-2012 – 63% (30) of the 48 largest MPOs included non-motorized travel in their regional models, while 47% (14) of those also distinguished between walk and bicycle modes. The modeling frameworks, model structures, and variables used for pedestrian and non-motorized regional modeling are described and discussed. A survey of MPO staff members revealed barriers to modeling non-motorized travel, including insufficient travel survey records, but also innovations being implemented, including smaller zones and non-motorized network assignment. Finally, best practices in...

Development of a Pedestrian Demand Estimation Tool: a Destination Choice Model

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There is growing support for improvements to the quality of the walking environment, including more investments to promote pedestrian travel. Planners, engineers, and others seek improved tools to estimate pedestrian demand that are sensitive to environmental and demographic factors at the appropriate scale in order to aid policy-relevant issues like air quality, public health, and smart allocation of infrastructure and other resources. Further, in the travel demand forecasting realm, tools of this kind are difficult to implement due to the use of spatial scales of analysis that are oriented towards motorized modes, vast data requirements, and computer processing limitations.

To address these issues, a two-phase project between Portland State University and Oregon Metro is underway to develop a robust pedestrian planning method for use in regional travel demand models. The first phase, completed in 2013, utilizes a tool that predicts the number of walking trips generated with spatial acuity, based on a new measure of the pedestrian environment and a micro-level unit of analysis. Currently, phase two is building upon this tool to predict the distribution of walking trips, connecting the origins predicted in phase one to destinations. This...

Friday Transportation Seminar: Racial Bias in Driver Yielding Behavior at Crosswalks

We are committed to making decisions that promote the success and well-being of our campus community. Until further notice, all live events hosted by TREC will be online only.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM.

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This seminar discusses how pedestrian race and gender can influence drivers’ behavior in interactions with pedestrians at...

TRB Showcase of Portland State University student research in transportation: Part 1

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Wei Feng: Impacts of Economic, Technological and Operational Factors on the Economic Competitiveness of Electric Commercial Vehicles in Fleet Replacement Decisions

Electric commercial vehicles (ECV) have the potential to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and pollution in urban areas. In addition, ECVs have lower per-mile operating costs and potentially lower maintenance costs. However, the initial purchase cost of ECVs is significantly higher than the purchase cost of a conventional diesel vehicle. From a purely economic perspective, there is a cost tradeoff between the low operating and maintenance costs of ECVs and their high initial capital costs. In this paper, a fleet replacement optimization framework is employed to analyze the competitiveness of ECVs. Scenarios with different fleet utilization, fuel efficiency and sensitivity analysis of ten additional factors indicate that ECVs are more cost effective when conventional diesel vehicles’ fuel efficiency is low (8.2 miles/gallon) and daily utilization is more than 54 miles. Breakeven values of some key economic and technological factors that separate the competitiveness between ECVs and conventional diesel vehicles are calculated in all scenarios. For example, in low conventional diesel vehicle fuel efficiency and low daily utilization scenario, ECVs are more competitive when their purchase prices...

Findings from a Quasi-Experimental Study of Boltage Encouragement Programs

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