The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) recently updated and amended its Technical Advisories (TA) on the design and application of shoulder and edge line rumble strips (TA 5040.35 and 5040.39) to include issues of cyclists and cyclists’ safety.

Previously, the TAs contained little information on the needs of cyclists or the need for a public process when designing and installing rumble strips as part of road reconstruction or paving.  The revised TA (5040.39, Revised 1), released on November 16, 2011, includes a new section (Section 9) about the accommodation of all roadway users, with a special emphasis on the needs of cyclists and the measures that should be considered to accommodate them.

The Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a Complete Streets Ordinance on December 14, 2011. The ordinance was fully supported by the County Highway Department and replaces an earlier Complete Streets executive order.   It strengthens and formalizes the County's commitment to creating streets that are better for everyone, regardless of their mode of travel.  According to the National Complete Streets Coalition, the Cook County ordinance is one of the strongest county-level policies in the country, as well as one of the growing number that include performance measures. Read more about the policy, its development, and adoption on Active Transportation Alliance website.

The U.K.’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) released a report highlighting existing research on the role of infrastructure in relation to the safety of cyclists and their interaction with other road users.  The report consists of an international literature review of this subject and was undertaken as part of the wider research program, Road User Safety and Cycling, being led by TRL.  The paper identifies the influence of infrastructure on intermediate, behavioral outcomes which, in turn, may influence accident risk, such as the speed of motorized traffic and cyclist route choice and maneuvers, etc.

The study finds that, of all interventions to increase bicyclist safety, the greatest benefits result from reduction in the general speed of motorized traffic. According to the report, speed reduction may be achieved through a variety of methods including physical traffic calming; urban design that changes the appearance and the (pedestrian) use of a street; and, possibly, the wider use of 20 mph speed limits, which are common in some cities.

A Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) report presents the results of a one-day workshop to explore technological innovations in accessible transportation and to better understand the requirements of pedestrians and travelers with visual impairment or other mobility disabilities.  The workshop brought together a panel of speakers made up of disability experts, academic professionals, transportation industry experts, and other professionals to discuss applications of technology for accessible transportation, identify knowledge gaps and opportunities, and highlight barriers to implementation.

The Association of Bicycle and Pedestrian Professionals (APBP) will host a webinar, “Emerging Technologies for Bicycle and Pedestrian Planning,” on January 18, 2012, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. CT.

The cost is $50 per site for APBP members and $75 per site for non-APBP members.  Register online.  For more information, contact Debra Goeks (262-228-7025 or deb@apbp.org).

The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) is holding a series of meetings and webinars throughout Chicago to receive input on their “Streets for Cycling Plan 2020,” which received funding through Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement program.  The plan will identify locations and ways for expanding and improving the city’s network of bicycling facilities, with the goal of making bike trips safe and comfortable for all Chicagoans.  The meetings flyer is also available in Spanish.  Meetings/webinars dates and locations are as follows: 

• January 18, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., Garfield Park Conservatory, Jensen Room, 300 N. Central Park Avenue.
• January 25, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., Woodson Regional Library, Auditorium, 9525 S. Halsted Street.
• February 1, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln Avenue.
• February 3 webinar, noon to 1:00 p.m.  Reserve a webinar seat.
• February 6 webinar, 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.  Reserve a webinar seat.

The California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) has released a report that explores the development of methods for identifying sites where there is potential for significant reductions in pedestrian and bicyclist injuries.  The report, titled “Strategies for Reducing Pedestrian and Bicyclist Injury at the Corridor Level,” uses data from 1998 to 2007 along a16.5-mile section of San Pablo Avenue (SR 123) in the San Francisco East Bay area.  The report includes a framework for conducting benefit-cost analyses and a prototype training protocol for conducting analyses of pedestrian and bicyclist safety in a corridor or network.  The guiding principle is that sites with the most potential for reducing injury are those where the most injuries can be prevented per dollar spent.  Everything else being equal, these sites are also the ones with the highest expected number of injuries if nothing is done.  Prior history is typically used to make this estimate, but this may not be sufficient, especially if the underlying rates are low. 

The Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2190 is dedicated to bicycles and contains six papers that explore various topics related to bicycle transportation and planning, including:

• The influence of the built environment on route selection for bicycle and car travel
• Automated bicycle counts
• Multimodal travel choices of bicyclists
• Effects of gender on commuter cycling and accident rates
• On-street bicycle facility configuration effects on bicyclist and motorist behavior; and
• Parking lane width effect on bicycle operating space

This volume complements the volume on pedestrians, which we featured in an earlier post.

The U.S. Access Board has reopened the comment period on its proposed guidelines for accessible public rights-of-way (PROWAG) through February 2, 2012.  While the original comment deadline was November 23 (see our earlier blog post), the extension is in response to requests from interested parties, including government and trade associations, for additional time to submit comments on the rule, as indicated in a published notice.

The proposed guidelines address access to public streets and sidewalks, street crossings, on-street parking, and other components of public rights-of-way.  Comments can be submitted or viewed through the www.regulations.gov website.  Further information on this rulemaking is available on the Board’s website. 

A new Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) research report (FHWA-HRT-11-035) looks at methods to evaluate pedestrian and bicycle traffic control device.  The report, Pedestrian and Bicyclist Traffic Control Device Evaluation Methods, is part of a larger FHWA research effort to quantify the effectiveness of engineering countermeasures in improving safety and operations for pedestrians and bicyclists. 

This study focuses on existing and experimental engineering countermeasures that have not yet been comprehensively evaluated. The report describesmethods that practitioners can use to conduct reliable evaluations of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic control devices.  The report will be of interest to engineers, planners, and other practitioners who implement pedestrian and bicycle treatments and to state, regional, and local authorities responsible for public safety.

Los Angeles County has published a model street design manual entitled Model Design Manual for Living Streets (access requires a user agreement).   The manual was written by national experts in “living streets” concepts and focuses on accommodating all roadway users and all modes, seeking to achieve balanced street design that accommodates cars while ensuring that pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users can travel safely and comfortably.  Beyond typical engineering concerns, the manual also offers information and guidance on the street aesthetics, economic vitality, and environmental sustainability.

The manual is intended to be of assistance to cities around the country in updating current practice related roadway planning, design, and construction.  Cities may wish to adopt the entire manual, certain chapters only (in full or in part), or to modify or customize chapters to suit their own specific needs.  The manual can be downloaded in different file formats in order to simplify the editing and customization process.  The manual is intended for three major user groups:

• Municipalities who lack the resources to undertake a major revision of their manuals and are looking for examples to assist in re-tooling their current manuals.
• Municipalities that want to adopt the latest thinking in street design.
• Designers, planners, and engineers who are looking for tools to provide flexibility within their existing street design standards.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) has released the digital version of their Urban Bikeway Design Guide, laid out specifically for printing.  (See our earlier blog post on the online version of the guide.)

The Guide is now available for free as a PDF download (both low and high resolution versions).  In addition, a hard-copy, bound version is available free to NACTO members and for $40 to others.

Two new brochures have been published by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program.  The  first brochure highlights best practices and policies among state departments of transportation (DOTs) for the scoping, design, and installation of raised medians and refuge islands.  Raised center, bull-nosed medians and pork-chop islands – in addition to reducing pedestrian crashes – provide additional benefits such as:

• Reducing motor vehicle crashes by 15 percent
• Decreasing delays (greater than 30 percent) for motorists
• Increasing capacity (greater than 30 percent) of roadways
• Reducing vehicle speeds on the roadway
• Providing space for landscaping within the right-of-way

The second brochure gives case studies on best practices and policies in state DOTs for policies and plans that promote good design and the installation of walkways and paved shoulders in roadway projects.  In addition to reducing pedestrian and other types of crashes, the benefits of well-designed and built walkways and shoulders can include:

• Improving roadway drainage
• Increasing effective turning radii at intersections
• Reducing shoulder maintenance requirements
• Providing emergency stopping space for broken down vehicles
• Providing space for maintenance operations and snow storage
• Providing an increased level of comfort for bicyclists

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) released a report summarizing the results of five one-day regional livability workshops, one of the strategies in the FHWA’s livable communities project.

The goals of the initiative are to raise awareness of transportation linkages to livability and to provide resources to practitioners and the public to help them more effectively consider livability issues within the federal transportation planning process.

(An earlier blog post featured the related FHWA guidebook, “Livability in Transportation Guidebook: Planning Approaches that Promote Livability.”)

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has published a new policy and design guide titled, Complete Intersections: A Guide to Reconstructing Intersections and Interchanges for Bicyclists and Pedestrians.   The comprehensive guide is intended to help practitioners (planners and engineer) identify actions and treatments which will improve safety and mobility for bicyclists and pedestrians at intersections and interchanges.  The handbook provides tools and techniques to improve bicycle and pedestrian transportation using basic guiding principles for common intersection types.  The focus is on intersections and interchanges since that is where multimodal transportation safety and mobility issues can be most challenging.

The guide is part of Caltrans strategy for implementing its Complete Streets policy.

The University of California Transportation Center (UCTC) at Berkeley recently published two reports on issues related to sidewalks and pedestrian travel in its magazine ACCESS.  The first is titled “Fixing Broken Sidewalks.”  In this report, Donald Shoup describes the need for communities to maintain sidewalks and outlines a “point-of-sale program” to help pay for maintenance, calling such a program micro-loans for such public investments. 

The second article, “Vibrant Sidewalks in the United States: Re-integrating Walking and a Quintessential Social Realm,” looks at the history of sidewalks and argues for a broader, not merely functional, understanding of the role or purpose(s) of sidewalks in a community.  It concludes that -- though it may seem counterintuitive -- “if we wish to encourage walking for transportation, we need to make sidewalks places for more than just movement.”

A new report by the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC) evaluates the bike boxes recently installed throughout the City of Portland.  The reportpresents a before-after study of bike boxes at 10 signalized intersections in Portland, Oregon. The bike boxes -- also known as advanced stop lines or advanced stop boxes -- were installed to increase visibility of cyclists and reduce conflicts between motor vehicle and cyclists, particularly in potential “right-hook” situations.  In the study, before-and-after videos were analyzed for seven intersections with green bike boxes, three intersections with uncolored bike boxes, and two control intersections.  In addition, user perceptions were measured through surveys of cyclists passing through five of the bike box intersections and of motorists working in areas where the boxes were installed.   The study concludes -- in answer to the question, “Do the bike boxes improve safety?” -- that, “after controlling for volumes, the number of conflicts decreased and yielding behavior increased.  In addition, user perceptions of safety improved.”

Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) released a research report, “An Assessment of Urban Form and Pedestrian and Transit Improvements as an Integrated Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy.”  Using data from a regional Household Activity Survey, the study models the association of urban form, pedestrian infrastructure, transit service and travel costs on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and carbon dioxide (CO²), controlling for household characteristics known to influence travel.  Although unable to isolate sidewalks themselves from other factors such as mixed land use patterns, shorter transit travel and wait times, lower transit fares, and higher parking costs, the study provides a foundation for further research into how pedestrian facility investment, urban form, transit service, and demand management (pricing) policy can interact to help achieve reductions in VMT and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

On Thursday, September 22, 2011 the Public Health Law & Policy (PHLP) will present the webinar, “Creating Pedestrian-Friendly Streets: A Short Walk Through Legal and Practical Issues,” from 12:00 to 1:15 p.m.  The webinar will cover key practical and legal considerations involved in creating pedestrian-friendly streets. Presenters will also describe policy tools that can help make walkable streets the ‘default’ in communities, including PHLP’s  new directory of municipal codes from communities across the country that make streets safer and more comfortable for pedestrians.

The Safe Routes to School National Partnership is hosting a free webinar on ways in which schools can fund, organize, and maintain fleets of bicycles for use in classes focused on traffic and bicycling safety.  The webinar will include presentations from a state bicycling advocacy group, a school official, and a bicycle manufacturer’s grant program manager, each of whom have each built individual SRTS programs through strategically funding, thoughtfully organizing, and systematically maintaining fleets of bicycles for use in the classroom.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, September 14 from noon to 1:00 p.m. CT.  Registrationis required.