National Institute for Transportation and Communities

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Abstract: Traffic safety engineering continues to rely on the traditional methods of design and operational guidelines, correlated to post-crash outcomes, in an attempt to understand the safety attributes of our roadway system.  The recently published Highway Safety Manual provides the newest source of methodologies and statistical models that can be applied to help predict or modify safety outcomes. Additionally, Road Safety Audits are a commonly used practice to gain the insight and experience of traffic and safety experts in an effort to avoid or solve a perplexing and/or unexpected safety problem.  Although none of these activities are completely void of human factors considerations, the ability to directly consider driver behavior, driver comprehension, and the impact of driver decision making in the analysis is incredibly complex and often omitted.  The use of full-scale driving simulators as a research and analysis tool may help significantly reduce the complexity of human factors-based consideration in the context of safety analyses and provide a new and effective tool to improve the safety of our roadway system. This lecture will consider several safety issues facing transportation agencies, namely median crossover crashes, permissive left-turn crashes, and roundabout safety, presenting thoughts and findings on related research.  Additionally, this lecture will integrate the attributes...

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Some researchers have tried to categorize cyclists’ levels of traffic stress utilizing facility or traffic data that can be readily measured in the field, such as motorized travel lanes, travel speeds, and type of bicycle infrastructure.

This seminar will present data and modeling results utilizing two novel data sources:

(a) real-world, on-road measurements of physiological stress as cyclists...

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Ronald Tamse is a traffic engineer for the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Ronald has been involved in traffic design in Amsterdam and Utrecht. He is most interested in bicycle and rail transportation. He has worked on the design of the Amsterdam subway, a light rail system in Utrecht, and is currently working on urban transportation solutions as Utrecht Centraal is redeveloped. Utrecht Centraal is the largest train station in The Netherlands.

Ronald will highlight key examples from Utrecht that show some new ideas, similarities between the Dutch and American approaches, as well as a few lessons imported from Portland. These examples will share highlights from major projects that include building a new commuter railway network, including the rebuilding of Utrecht Centraal railway station, and the development of a light rail line in Utrecht that uses MAX as a development model. In addition, Ronald will demonstrate the importance of connecting bike infrastructure through network planning, infrastructure, and connections to transit.