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

The video begins at 1:20.

View slides: Foster Presentation (PDF)

View slides: Muhs Presentation (PDF)

View slides: Wagner Presentation (PDF)

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...

Read more

PlanSafe - Transportation Safety Planning: Forecasting the Safety Impacts in Socio-Demographic Changes and Safety Countermeasures

No archived materials are available for this presentation.

Examination of the Impact of Speed Upon Highway Safety: An Oregon Perspective

Watch video

PSU study shows drivers less likely to stop for, more likely to crowd black pedestrians

Modeling Injury Outcomes of Crashes involving Heavy Vehicles on Texas Highways

Watch video

View slides

Summary: A growing concern related to large-truck crashes has increased in the State of Texas in recent years due to the potential economic impacts and level of injury severity that can be sustained. Yet, studies on large truck involved crashes highlighting the contributing factors leading to injury severity have not been conducted in detail in the State of Texas especially for its interstate system.  In this study, we analyze the contributing factors related to injury severity by utilizing Texas crash data based on a discrete outcome based model which accounts for possible unobserved heterogeneity related to human, vehicle and road-environment. We estimate a random parameter logit model (i.e., mixed logit) to predict the likelihood of five standard injury severity scales commonly used in Crash Records Information System (CRIS) in Texas – fatal, incapacitating, non-incapacitating, possible, and no injury (property damage only). Estimation findings indicate that the level of injury severity outcomes is highly influenced by a number of complex interactions between factors and the effects of the some factors can vary across observations. The contributing factors include drivers’ demographics, traffic flow condition, roadway geometrics, land use and temporal...

Read more

The Multi-Tasking Driver: Are We Being Driven to Distraction?

View flyer

The video begins at 2:40.

Driver distraction accounts for up to 30 % of accidents on the roadway. One of the leading causes of driver distraction is the concurrent use of a cell phone to talk or text message. In fact, accident rates are quadrupled for drivers talking on a cell phone and increase by a factor of 8 for those drivers texting. I will show that these impairments are primarily due to limitations in attention, and as such are not eliminated with hands-free devices. Cell phones cause a form of inattention blindness, wherein drivers look but fail to see important information in the driving environment, such as a child in a crosswalk. These impairments differ qualitatively from other seemingly similar sources of distraction (e.g., listening to the radio or books on tape, talking to a passenger, etc.) and are similar to the impairments associated with driving drunk. Efforts to practice away the dual-task interference have proven unsuccessful indicating that you cannot train yourself to become an expert cell phone driver. However, there are intriguing individual differences for a very small group of "supertaskers" who can, in fact, drive and talk on a cell phone with little or no impairment. Together these data have important implications for theories of attention...

Read more

Access Management, A Transportation Safety Tool

The video begins at 1:39.

Webinar: Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies on Oct 16, 2018

Webinar: Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies

EDUCATION LIBRARY ARCHIVE

Missed the webinar or want a look back? 

OVERVIEW

There is nationwide interest in supporting sustainable and active transportation modes such as bicycling and walking due to the many benefits associated with them, including reduced congestion, lower emissions and improved health. Although the number of bicyclists is increasing, safety remains a top concern. In urban areas, a common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. While geometric treatments and pavement markings have been studied, there is a lack of research on signal timing treatments to address right-hook bicycle-vehicle conflicts.

Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies, published in April 2018, is the first study to explore bicycle signal control strategies for addressing bicycle-vehicle conflicts. This study analyzed the operational impacts of traditional...

Read more

Regional Planning, Greenhouse Gases, and UrbanFootprint open source software

Watch video

View slides

Summary: Since about 2008, the planning world has been experiencing a paradigm shift that began in places like California and Oregon that have adopted legislation requiring the linking of land use and transportation plans to outcomes, specifically to the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHGs). In response to this need, Calthorpe Associates has developed a new planning tool, called UrbanFootprint, on a fully Open Source platform (i.e. Ubuntu Linux, PostGIS, PostGreSQL, etc.). As a powerful and dynamic web and mobile-enabled geo-spatial scenario creation and modeling tool with full co-benefits analysis capacity, UrbanFootprint has great utility for urban planning and research at multiple scales, from general plans, to project assessments, to regional and state-wide scenario development and analysis. Scenario outcomes measurement modules include: a powerful ‘sketch’ transportation model that produces travel and emissions impacts; a public health analysis engine that measures land use impacts on respiratory disease, obesity, and related impacts and costs; climate-sensitive building energy and water modeling; fiscal impacts analysis; and greenhouse gas and other emissions modeling.

Bio: Garlynn Woodsong is a Project Manager in the regional and large-...

Read more

Urban Form and Traffic Safety: Examining the Design and Developmental Factors that Influence Crash Incidence

The video begins at 1:11.

Pages