Roundabout design and cycling safety

Roundabouts reduce the frequency and severity of motor vehicle crashes and therefore the number installed has increased dramatically in the last 20 years in many countries. However, the safety impacts of roundabouts for bicycle riders are a source of concern, with many studies reporting lower injury reductions for cyclists than car occupants. This paper summarises the results of a project undertaken to provide guidance on how cyclist safety could be improved at existing roundabouts in Queensland, Australia, where cyclist crashes have been increasing and legislation gives motor vehicles priority over cyclists and pedestrians at roundabouts. The review of international roundabout design guidelines identified two schools of design: tangential roundabouts (common in English-speaking countries, including Australia), which focus on minimising delay to motor vehicles, and radial roundabouts (common in continental Europe), which focus on speed reduction and safety. While it might be expected that radial roundabouts would be safer for cyclists, there have been no studies to confirm this view. Most guidelines expect cyclists to act as vehicle traffic in single-lane, typically low-speed, roundabouts. Some jurisdictions do not permit cyclists to travel on multi-lane roundabouts, and recommend segregated bicycle facilities because of their lowest crash risk for cyclists. Given that most bicycle-vehicle crashes at roundabouts involve an entering vehicle and a circulating cyclist, the greatest challenges appear to be reducing the speed of motor vehicles on the approach/entry to roundabouts and other ways of maximizing the likelihood that cyclists will be seen. Lower entry speeds are likely to underpin the greater safety of compact roundabouts for cyclists and, conversely, the higher than expected crash rates at two-lane roundabouts. European research discourages the use of bike lanes in roundabouts which position cyclists at the edge of the road and contributes to cyclists being less likely to be noticed by drivers.

Developing an international survey of bicycle and helmet usage

The European Union‐funded collaborative network, COST Action TU1101: Towards safer bicycling through optimization of bicycle helmets and usage, aims to increase scientific knowledge about bicycle helmets in regards to traffic safety and to disseminate this knowledge to stakeholders, including cyclists, legislators, manufacturers, and the scientific community. The COST research team has developed a uniform international survey to better understand attitudinal and other factors that may influence bicycle and helmet usage, as well as crash risk. The online survey is being distributed by project partners in Europe, Israel, Australia, and potentially the US and Canada. The survey contains four types of questions: (1) biographical data, (2) frequency of cycling and amount of cycling for different purposes (e.g., commuting, health, recreation) and in different environments (e.g., bicycle trails, bike lanes, on sidewalks, in traffic), (3) frequency and circumstances for use and non‐use of helmets, attitudes and reasons for it, and; (4) crash involvement and level of reporting to the police. While the potential value of comparative data across countries with very different cycling cultures and safety levels is substantial, there are numerous challenges in developing, conducting, and analyzing the results of the survey. This presentation will focus on the scope of the international study, methodological issues and pitfalls of such a collaborative effort, and on initial results from one country (Israel). To illustrate, two findings from the preliminary Israeli survey indicate that: (1) none of the crashes were reported to the police including the ones involving hospital admission. Although underreporting of bicycle crashes by police is well documented in all countries the extent is unknown, and can be extreme. (2) Older riders tend to ride more for health/exercise reasons, while younger riders tend to ride more for commuting. Thus there is an interaction between riders’ age and the place and times of riding.

Can publicly available webcameras and mechanical Turks be used to evaluate physical activity policy and built environment change?

Introduction: Fewer than 50% of adults and 40% of youth meet US CDC guidelines for physical activity (PA) with the built environment (BE) a culprit for limited PA. A challenge in evaluating policy and BE change is the forethought to capture a priori PA behaviors and the ability to eliminate bias in post-change environments. The present objective was to analyze existing public data feeds to quantify effectiveness of BE interventions. The Archive of Many Outdoor Scenes (AMOS) has collected 135 million images of outdoor environments from 12,000 webcams since 2006. Many of these environments have experienced BE change. Methods: One example of BE change is the addition of protected bike lanes and a bike share program in Washington, DC.Weselected an AMOS webcam that captured this change. AMOS captures a photograph from eachwebcamevery half hour.AMOScaptured the 120 webcam photographs between 0700 and 1900 during the first work week of June 2009 and the 120 photographs from the same week in 2010. We used the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) website to crowd-source the image annotation. MTurk workers were paid US$0.01 to mark each pedestrian, cyclist and vehicle in a photograph. Each image was coded 5 unique times (n=1200). The data, counts of transportation mode, was downloaded to SPSS for analysis. Results: The number of cyclists per scene increased four-fold between 2009 and 2010 (F=36.72, p=0.002). There was no significant increase in pedestrians between the two years, however there was a significant increase in number of vehicles per scene (F=16.81, p

Análise da viabilidade técnica e ambiental de vias cicláveis na cidade de Presidente Epitácio-SP

Pós-graduação em Engenharia Civil - FEIS

Nuevo paradigma para decisiones colectivas en entornos no competitivos

La tesis estudia uno de los aspectos más importantes de la gestión de la sociedad de la información: conocer la manera en que una persona valora cualquier situación. Esto es importante para el individuo que realiza la valoración y para el entorno con el que se relaciona. La valoración es el resultado de la comparación: se asignan los mismos valores a alternativas similares y mayores valores a alternativas mejor consideradas en el proceso de comparación. Los patrones que guían al individuo a la hora de hacer la comparación se derivan de sus preferencias individuales (es decir, de sus opiniones). En la tesis se presentan varios procedimientos para establecer las relaciones de preferencia entre alternativas de una persona. La valoración progresa hasta obtener una representación numérica de sus preferencias. Cuando la representación de preferencias es homogénea permite, además, contrastar las preferencias personales con las del resto de evaluadores, lo que favorece la evaluación de políticas, la transferencia de información entre diferentes individuos y el diseño de la alternativa que mejor se adapte a las preferencias identificadas. Al mismo tiempo, con esta información se pueden construir comunidades de personas con los mismos sistemas de preferencias ante una cuestión concreta. La tesis muestra un caso de aplicación de esta metodología: optimización de las políticas laborales en un mercado real. Para apoyar a los demandantes de empleo (en su iniciación o reincorporación al mundo laboral o en el cambio de su actividad) es necesario conocer sus preferencias respecto a las ocupaciones que están dispuestos a desempeñar. Además, para que la intermediación laboral sea efectiva, las ocupaciones buscadas deben de ser ofrecidas por el mercado de trabajo y el demandante debe reunir las condiciones para acceder a esas ocupaciones. El siguiente desarrollo de estos modelos nos lleva a los procedimientos utilizados para transformar múltiples preferencias en una decisión agregada y que consideran tanto la opinión de cada uno de los individuos que participan en la decisión como las interacciones sociales, todo ello dirigido a generar una solución que se ajuste lo mejor posible al punto de vista de toda la población. Las decisiones con múltiples participantes inciden, principalmente, en: el aumento del alcance para incorporar a personas que tradicionalmente no han sido consideradas en las tomas de decisiones, la agregación de las preferencias de los múltiples participantes en las tomas de decisiones colectivas (mediante votación, utilizando aplicaciones desarrolladas para la Web2.0 y a través de comparaciones interpersonales de utilidad) y, finalmente, la auto-organización para permitir que interaccionen entre si los participantes en la valoración, de forma que hagan que el resultado final sea mejor que la mera agregación de opiniones individuales. La tesis analiza los sistemas de e-democracia o herramientas para su implantación que tienen más más utilización en la actualidad o son más avanzados. Están muy relacionados con la web 2.0 y su implantación está suponiendo una evolución de la democracia actual. También se estudian aplicaciones de software de Colaboración en la toma de decisiones (Collaborative decision-making (CDM)) que ayudan a dar sentido y significado a los datos. Pretenden coordinar las funciones y características necesarias para llegar a decisiones colectivas oportunas, lo que permite a todos los interesados participar en el proceso. La tesis finaliza con la presentación de un nuevo modelo o paradigma en la toma de decisiones con múltiples participantes. El desarrollo se apoya en el cálculo de las funciones de utilidad empática. Busca la colaboración entre los individuos para que la toma de decisiones sea más efectiva, además pretende aumentar el número de personas implicadas. Estudia las interacciones y la retroalimentación entre ciudadanos, ya que la influencia de unos ciudadanos en los otros es fundamental para los procesos de toma de decisiones colectivas y de e-democracia. También incluye métodos para detectar cuando se ha estancado el proceso y se debe interrumpir. Este modelo se aplica a la consulta de los ciudadanos de un municipio sobre la oportunidad de implantar carriles-bici y las características que deben tomar. Se simula la votación e interacción entre los votantes. ABSTRACT The thesis examines one of the most important aspects of the management of the information society: get to know how a person values every situation. This is important for the individual performing the assessment and for the environment with which he interacts. The assessment is a result of the comparison: identical values are allocated to similar alternatives and higher values are assigned to those alternatives that are more favorably considered in the comparison process. Patterns that guide the individual in making the comparison are derived from his individual preferences (ie, his opinions). In the thesis several procedures to establish preference relations between alternatives a person are presented. The assessment progresses to obtain a numerical representation of his preferences. When the representation of preferences is homogeneous, it also allows the personal preferences of each individual to be compared with those of other evaluators, favoring policy evaluation, the transfer of information between different individuals and design the alternative that best suits the identified preferences. At the same time, with this information you can build communities of people with similar systems of preferences referred to a particular issue. The thesis shows a case of application of this methodology: optimization of labour policies in a real market. To be able support jobseekers (in their initiation or reinstatement to employment or when changing area of professional activity) is necessary to know their preferences for jobs that he is willing to perform. In addition, for labour mediation to be effective occupations that are sought must be offered by the labour market and the applicant must meet the conditions for access to these occupations. Further development of these models leads us to the procedures used to transform multiple preferences in an aggregate decision and consider both the views of each of the individuals involved in the decision and the social interactions, all aimed at generating a solution that best fits of the point of view of the entire population. Decisions with multiple participants mainly focus on: increasing the scope to include people who traditionally have not been considered in decision making, aggregation of the preferences of multiple participants in collective decision making (by vote, using applications developed for the Web 2.0 and through interpersonal comparisons of utility) and, finally, self-organization to allow participants to interact with each other in the assessment, so that the final result is better than the mere aggregation of individual opinions. The thesis analyzes the systems of e-democracy or tools for implementation which are more popular or more advanced. They are closely related to the Web 2.0 and its implementation is bringing an evolution of the current way of understanding democracy. We have also studied Collaborative Decision-Making (CDM)) software applications in decision-making which help to give sense and meaning to the data. They intend to coordinate the functions and features needed to reach adequate collective decisions, allowing all stakeholders to participate in the process. The thesis concludes with the presentation of a new model or paradigm in decision-making with multiple participants. The development is based on the calculation of the empathic utility functions. It seeks collaboration between individuals to make decision-making more effective; it also aims to increase the number of people involved. It studies the interactions and feedback among citizens, because the influence of some citizens in the other is fundamental to the process of collective decision-making and e-democracy. It also includes methods for detecting when the process has stalled and should be discontinued. This model is applied to the consultation of the citizens of a municipality on the opportunity to introduce bike lanes and characteristics they should have. Voting and interaction among voters is simulated.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Through Alterations to the Public Right-of-Way

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

A MORE COMPLETE STREET A STREET FOR EVERYONE TO ENJOY, NORTH EAST STREET, FREDERICK, MARYLAND – A DESIGN INVESTIGATION OF DIFFERENT STREET DESIGN THEORIES

This design-research thesis suggests that the improvement of North East Street performances by using Complete Streets, Green Street, Place Making and Context Sensitive Solution principles and practices. Heavily used by a variety of users, often conflicting with one another, University of Maryland Campus Drive would benefit from a major planning and design amelioration to meet the increasing demands of serving as a city main street. The goal of this thesis project is to prioritize the benefits for pedestrians in the right-of-way and improve the pedestrian experience. This goal also responds to the recent North East Street Extension Phrase I of economic renaissances. The goal of this design-research thesis will be achieved focusing on four aspects. First, the plans and designs will suggest to building mixed use blocks, increase the diversity of street economic types and convenience of people’s living. Second, design and plans will propose bike lanes, separate driving lanes from sidewalks and bike lanes by street tree planters, and narrow driving lanes to reduce vehicular traffic volume and speed in order to reduce pedestrian and vehicle conflicts. Third, plans and designs will introduce bioswales, living walls and raingardens to treat and reuse rain water. Finally, the plans and designs will seek to preserve local culture and history by adding murals and farmers market. The outcome of the design-research thesis project is expected to serve as an example of implementing Complete Streets, Green Street, Place Making and Context Sensitive Solution principles and practices in urban landscape, where transportation, environment and social needs interact with each other.

Estudio y optimización de las infraestructuras de los carriles para bicicletas

La necesidad cotidiana de los ciudadanos de desplazarse para realizar diferentes actividades, sea cual fuere su naturaleza, se ha visto afectada en gran medida por los cambios producidos. Las ventajas generadas por la inclusión de la bicicleta como modo de transporte y la proliferación de su uso entre la ciudadanía son innumerables y se extienden tanto en el ámbito de la movilidad urbana como del desarrollo sostenible. En la actualidad, hay multitud de programas para la implantación, fomento o aumento de la participación ciudadana relacionado con la bicicleta en las ciudades. Pero en definitiva, todos y cada uno de estas iniciativas tienen la misma finalidad, crear una malla de vías cicladles eficaz y útil. Capaces de permitir el uso de la bicicleta en vías preferentes con unas garantías de seguridad altas, incorporando la bicicleta en el modelo de intermodalidad del transporte urbano. Con la progresiva implantación del carril bici, muchas personas han empezado a utilizarlas para moverse por la ciudad. Pero todo lo nuevo necesita un periodo de adaptación. Y, la realidad es que la red de viales destinados para estos vehículos está repleta de obstáculos para el ciclista. La actual situación ha llevado a cuestionar qué cantidad de kilómetros de carriles bici son necesarios para abastecer la demanda existente de este modo de transporte y, si las obras ejecutadas y proyectadas son las correctas y suficientes. En este trabajo se presenta una herramienta, basada en un modelo de programación matemática, para el diseño óptimo de una red destinada a los ciclistas. En concreto, el sistema determina una infraestructura para la bicicleta adaptada a las características de la red de carreteras existentes, con base en criterios de teoría de grafos ponderados. Como una aplicación del modelo propuesto, se ofrece el resultado de estos experimentos, obteniéndose un número de conclusiones útiles para la planificación y el diseño de redes de carriles bici desde una perspectiva social. Se realiza una aplicación de la metodología desarrollada para el caso real del municipio de Málaga (España). Por último se produce la validación del modelo de optimización presentado y la repercusión que tiene éste sobre el resultado final y la importancia o el peso del total de variables capaces de condicionar el resultado final de la red ciclista. Se obtiene, por tanto, una herramienta destinada a la mejora de la planificación, diseño y gestión de las diferentes infraestructuras para la bicicleta, con capacidad de interactuar con el modelo de red vial actual y con el resto de los modos de transportes existentes en el entramado urbano de las ciudades.

UTFORMNING AV GÅNG-, CYKEL- OCH MOPED-NÄT ANPASSAT FÖR ELCYKEL

Purpose: An increase in the number of pedelecs on Swedish roads is according to studies soon reality. This creates a need to adapt the bmp-grid (bike-, moped- and pedestrian-grid) to pedelecs for them to experience good security, accessibility and comfort while using it. The guidelines Swedish municipalities follow are VGU(Design of Roads and Streets) and the GCM-manual(Bike-, moped-, and pedestrian-manual) which currently do not take society’s future increase of pedelecs into account. VGU and the GCM-manual are tools that are commonly used during planning and design of roads and streets. The aim of the thesis is to use current advice and recommendations on how to adapt the bmp-grid to the pedelec and with this complete current guidelines for bmp-infrastructure. Method: The document-analysis is made on current federal documents that have an impact on bmp-design. Scetch-suggestions were then developed from the author’s personal improvement suggestions and from advice and recommendations gathered during the document-analysis and the theoretical framework. Findings: It was discovered that if the bmp-grid’s design allow bikes traveling up to 30km/h and has a good standard for bicycles according to VGU, then the infrastructure generally fulfil the needs of the pedelec. Altough there are still areas in VGU that needs complements. This need to be done on the design-guidelines so they can aid the adaption of the infrastructure to the pedelec during the planning- and design process. Necessary steps according to the result is to give clearer notifications on bmp-design, issue guidelines for choosing DTS, motivate minimal widths on roads, categories bikers and pedestrians into separate groups, give out more detailed descriptions of when separation of bikers and pedestrians should be done and also to specify different types of bike-users. When taking needs and claim of the pedelec into consideration the result shows that: adaption of the whole bmp-grid to the pedelec is not possible, to simplify priorities the bmp-grid needs to be divided into different sections, space should be taken from the car-traffic, solutions with mixed-traffic and bike-fields for pedelecs can be used in low-speed areas, larger opportunities to connect towns to increase commuting with bicycles appeared with the pedelec. Implications: After examining current guidelines regarding the design of the bmp-grid and gathering opinions on this from interviews the conclusion is that several areas in VGU needs completion. The following are recommendations on how to take the pedelec into consideration during the design-process:• Connect towns and urban-areas with bmp-grids to make use of pedelecs capacity.• Where there is not enough space for both cars and separated pedelec- and bike lanes the speed for car-traffic can be lowered to 30km/h. This creates opportunities with mixed-traffic or bike-lanes.• The width of existing roads and streets are often greater than what’s described in VGU. They can be made smaller to free space on roads for bicycle-infrastructure.• To prioritize which parts of the bmp-grid that needs design to allow pedelecs the bmp-grid can be divided into main- and local grid. The main grid should be design with consideration to the needs and claim of the pedelecs. Limitations: The limitation of the study lies in that none of the interviews where done with employees in any of the bigger municipalities in Sweden. This gives the study a general application in small- to middle-sized cities but not in bigger cities.Keywords: elcykel, ebike, pedelec, utformning, cykel, infrastruktur, infrastructure, society, planering, utformning, säkerhet, fordonstyp

Bike park in Groningen, The Netherlands

Groningen is a city that collects contemporary projects. A trip around town reveals something like a zoo, with examples of all design languages of the last twenty years, many of them now aging and distinctly past their prime. Even though some of these projects are outdated, this collection not only demonstrates a commitment to design (even occasionally lacking judgement) but also serves an archival function: we can consult the Groningen Zoo of Design to determine the design to determine the design preoccupations of the past and how those often theoretical interests (since most of the work by these designers was not built) manifested themselves in material form on the ground.

Extraction of road lanes from high-resolution stereo aerial imagery based on maximum likelihood segmentation and texture enhancement

Accurate road lane information is crucial for advanced vehicle navigation and safety applications. With the increasing of very high resolution (VHR) imagery of astonishing quality provided by digital airborne sources, it will greatly facilitate the data acquisition and also significantly reduce the cost of data collection and updates if the road details can be automatically extracted from the aerial images. In this paper, we proposed an effective approach to detect road lanes from aerial images with employment of the image analysis procedures. This algorithm starts with constructing the (Digital Surface Model) DSM and true orthophotos from the stereo images. Next, a maximum likelihood clustering algorithm is used to separate road from other ground objects. After the detection of road surface, the road traffic and lane lines are further detected using texture enhancement and morphological operations. Finally, the generated road network is evaluated to test the performance of the proposed approach, in which the datasets provided by Queensland department of Main Roads are used. The experiment result proves the effectiveness of our approach.

Changing lanes : an exploration of the journey from dance through choreography to directing and the spoken word

This paper reveals a journey of theatrical exploration. It is a journey of enquiry and investigation backed by a vigorous, direct and dense professional history of creative work.

The significance of endogeneity problems in crash models: An examination of left-turn lanes in intersection crash models

Crash prediction models are used for a variety of purposes including forecasting the expected future performance of various transportation system segments with similar traits. The influence of intersection features on safety have been examined extensively because intersections experience a relatively large proportion of motor vehicle conflicts and crashes compared to other segments in the transportation system. The effects of left-turn lanes at intersections in particular have seen mixed results in the literature. Some researchers have found that left-turn lanes are beneficial to safety while others have reported detrimental effects on safety. This inconsistency is not surprising given that the installation of left-turn lanes is often endogenous, that is, influenced by crash counts and/or traffic volumes. Endogeneity creates problems in econometric and statistical models and is likely to account for the inconsistencies reported in the literature. This paper reports on a limited-information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimation approach to compensate for endogeneity between left-turn lane presence and angle crashes. The effects of endogeneity are mitigated using the approach, revealing the unbiased effect of left-turn lanes on crash frequency for a dataset of Georgia intersections. The research shows that without accounting for endogeneity, left-turn lanes ‘appear’ to contribute to crashes; however, when endogeneity is accounted for in the model, left-turn lanes reduce angle crash frequencies as expected by engineering judgment. Other endogenous variables may lurk in crash models as well, suggesting that the method may be used to correct simultaneity problems with other variables and in other transportation modeling contexts.

Changing lanes

The purpose of Changing Lanes was to question the identity of Brisbane laneways through the collaboration of local stakeholders by promoting design. Community partners provided design briefs for student work from Architecture and Interior Design to be included in a design competition. Shortlisted student projects were featured in the Changing Lanes event during which the winners were announced. In addition to student work from Architecture and Interior Design, the five other disciplines from QUT's School of Design also exhibited samples of student work. The engagement of local stakeholders; architectural practice, interior designers, engineers, and a media and publication agency was fundamental to the success of this event. The design work on display provided creative expression for the potential of Brisbane Laneways to bring communities together through the language of design. An underutilised area of Fortitude Valley was activated through a combination of media including drawings, videos, street furniture, and music.