The National Complete Streets Coalition released the report, "Complete Streets Policy Analysis 2010: A story of growing strength," which documents the fact that states and local governments around the nation are adopting Complete Streets policies.  These policies are designed to ensure that future transportation infrastructure investments provide safe options for all roadway users.  The report rates the strength of extant written policies and highlights policies that do a particularly good job covering individual policy elements.

The Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) will offer a free webinar on the recently published Urban Bikeway Design Guidefrom the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).  The webinar will introduce the guide and demonstrate how it may be applied.  The overview will be followed by a series of shorter presentations on how the principles of the guide are being applied in cities nationwide. Presenters will include Mia Birk, Joe Gilpin, Robert Burchfield, Hayes Lord, and representatives from other NACTO cities.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm CDT.  The webinar is free but requires advance registration.

Easter Seals Project ACTION, in partnership with the National Complete Streets Coalition, will offer a two-part training webinar as part of Easter Seals’ 2011 Selected Topics on Accessible Transportation series.

The webinars will take place today, May 18, and next Wednesday, May 25 at 1:00 pm CDT.  The webinars are free, but require advance registration.  Space is limited.  More information and a link to registration is on the event page.

During the first webinar on May 18, instructors will introduce the principles of complete streets and help participants understand how those principles translate into design and function on the ground and in the street.  Each participant will be given a homework assignment to help reinforce concepts andto gain further knowledge about initiatives in their local communities.

The second webinar on May 25 will be an open discussion session. This will allow the presenters to answer participant questions and the group to discuss the homework assignment. This session will be discussion about what makes a community livable and accessible for all of its residents.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), in conjunction with the Transportation Research Board (TRB), is offering a series of web briefings to on the content and methods of the new Highway Capacity Manual (HCM2010).

Among the major changes to HCM2010 is the inclusion of new multimodal methods and applications. Especially important for engineers and planners concerned with urban, multimodal, and non-motorized transportation, is the new Urban Streets methodology.  This methodology includes a new multimodal approach to determine level-of-service for automobiles, pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders on urban streets.

Upcoming web briefings will cover the new signalized intersection methodology (May 17) and auto mode in the new multi-modal urban streets methodology (May 19).

The City of Chicago has begun construction on the Cermak/Blue Island Sustainable Streetscape Demonstration Project.  The project goal is to create an environmentally friendly “green street” on Cermak Road and Blue Island Avenue between Ashland and Western Avenues.  The project calls for the use of recycled materials, pervious surfaces to improve stormwater drainage, and reflective pavement coatings and street trees to reduce the ‘heat island effect’ in the summer.  In addition, along the Blue Island Avenue segment, bike and parking lanes are to be paved with a "smog-eating" concrete, which contains titanium dioxide and is said to help break down pollutants into less harmful compounds.

For more on the City’s Streetscape and Sustainable Design Program, visit CDOT’s website.  You can also download a presentation on the Cermak/Blue Island project from the Center for Neighborhood Technology.

A new report (NCHRP Report 674) explores the issues and design solutions for the accessibility of two complex intersection forms for blind pedestrians: intersections with channelized right turn lanes (CTLs) and modern roundabouts with one-lane and two-lane approaches.  The report offers guidance and information related to the establishment of safe crossings for blind pedestrians at these intersections.

For CTLs, the study team concludes that channelized turn lane locations can be very challenging to cross for blind pedestrians and signalized treatments may need to be considered at these sites.  Since field tests indicated that high vehicle speeds contributed to the high incidence of unsafe crossings at CTL locations, geometric designs and treatments intended to reduce vehicular speed -- such as traffic calming designs, raised crosswalks, pork-chop islands, narrow lane width, small curve radii, and the absence of an acceleration lane -- may further decrease the likelihood of unsafe crossing for pedestrians who are blind.

For single-lane roundabouts, the study concludes that while some blind research participants had difficulties crossing single-lane roundabouts in a safe manner, these sites appear not to pose crossing difficulties that are beyond those experienced by many blind travelers at similar signalized intersections. Key factors for safety here include:

• Low vehicle speeds at the crosswalk
• The willingness of a majority of drivers to yield to pedestrians
• Properly installed detectable warning surfaces at all transition points
• Availability of certified orientation and mobility instruction customized to roundabout crossings

The study also confirmed that two-lane roundabouts are challenging and not accessible without the provision of additional crossing treatments or a drastic change toward an increase in likelihood of drivers voluntarily yielding to pedestrians.

An article in the journal Injury Prevention examines the relative risk of injury for bicycling on cycle tracks versus in the street. The study, which was conducted in Montreal (where a relatively extensive and long-standing network of cycle tracks exists) compares bicyclist injury rates on six cycle tracks versus the risk rate (RR) on comparable reference streets.  The study found that the risk of injury for cyclists riding on cycle tracks is about 28 per cent lower than for cyclists riding on roads where they are unprotected from traffic.  Specifically, the RR of injury on cycle tracks was 0.72 (95 percent confidence interval 0.60 to 0.85) compared with bicycling in the reference streets.  The authors conclude that the “data suggest that the injury risk of bicycling on cycle tracks is less than bicycling in streets. The construction of cycle tracks should not be discouraged."

The Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) is issuing this Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) to develop accessibility guidelines for shared use paths. Shared use paths are designed for both transportation and recreation purposes and are used by pedestrians, bicyclists, skaters, equestrians, and other users. The guidelines will include technical provisions for making newly constructed and altered shared use paths covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) and the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 (ABA) accessible to persons with disabilities.

Comments on the proposed rule must be submitted by June 27, 2011.  You can download the document and submit comments directly from the eRulemaking Program  website.

A new study sponsored by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and the Royal College for Art (RCA) in the U.K. investigates how blind and partially-sighted people navigate the public realm in order to gain a better understanding of their needs and to embed this understanding into emerging street design practice. The study surveyed a range of urban designers, engineers, architects, and people with low vision in order to gain information and insights. The study attempts to look at how real people experience real street environments, and thereby seeks to move the debate away from abstract ideas and towards practical interventions informed by user experience.

It should be noted that the designs and guidance offered in this study may not be consistent with U.S. best practice and proposed guidance, which can found on the U.S. Access Board’s Public Rights-of-Way Advisory Committee (PROWAC) website.

A new report (FHWA-HRT-10-068) examines the relative daytime and nighttime visibility of three crosswalk marking patterns: transverse lines, continental, and bar pairs. The primary objective was to study the visibility of crosswalk markings by determining detection distance and identifying the variables that affect this distance.  The main conclusions of the study are:

• The detection distances to continental and bar pairs are statistically similar. The detection distances to continental and bar pairs are statistically different from transverse markings.
• For the existing midblock locations, a general observation is that the continental marking was detected at about twice the distance upstream as the transverse marking during daytime conditions. This increase in distance reflects 8 s of increased awareness of the crossing for a 30-mi/h operating speed.
• Participants preferred the continental and bar pairs markings over the transverse markings.

The study recommends that the following revisions to the MUTCD be considered:

• Add bar pairs as a usable crosswalk pattern.
• Provide typical dimensions for the marking patterns including spacing that will assist in avoiding wheel paths.
• Consider making bar pairs or continental the “default” for all crosswalks across uncontrolled approaches (i.e., not controlled by signals or stop signs), with exceptions allowing transverse lines where engineering judgment determines that such markings would be adequate, such as a location with low-speed residential streets.

According to the Physics arXiv blog, since 2005, the French city of Lyon’s bicycle-sharing system, called Velo'v has been praised for its use of innovative technology (such as electronic locks), onboard computers, and access via smart cards. The blog recently offered a preview of a paper on the Lyon system, which now offers some 4,000 bikes at nearly 350 stations around the city and accounts for approximately 16,000 trips per day.  

Since its introduction, the city’s bike-share system has recorded the start and end locations, as well as the travel times, of every journey.  Researchers have now analyzed this data in an article entitled “Characterizingthe speed and paths of shared bicycle use in Lyon,” now published in the journal Transportation Research Part D: Transportation and Environment.  The authors look at 11.6 million bicycle trips in Lyon between May 2005 and December 2007, in what they call “the first robust characterization of urban cyclists’ behavior.”  The data provide information on cycle flows that may be of use in the planning of dedicated bicycle lanes and other facilities.

In March, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) released its Urban Bikeway Design Guide at the National Bike Summit in Washington D.C.  The guide is part of the Cities for Cycling Initiative. The guide’s stated purpose is to provide cities with state-of-the-practice cycling solutions to create complete streets that are safe and enjoyable for bicyclists.

The guide is divided into five major sections, presenting innovative treatments and designs for bike lanes, cycle tracks, intersections, signals, and signs and marking.  There are also sections containing case studies from NACTO member cities, a matrix of all the treatments that the guide presents, and a list of the design guide project team members in each of the NACTO member cities.  The Bikes Belong coalition and the SRAM Cycling Fund sponsored the guide.

Most of the treatments in the guide are not directly referenced in the current versions of the AASHTO Guide to Bikeway Facilities or the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), although many of the elements are found within these documents. The Federal Highway Administration recently posted information regarding approval status of various bicycle related treatments not covered in the MUTCD, including many of the treatments provided in the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide. All of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide treatments are in use internationally and in many cities around the U.S.

The City of Chicago released the results of bike counts conducted at 26 locations around the city in the summer and fall of 2009.  The counts were made with automated pneumatic tube counters designed specifically to count bicycles but not motorized vehicles.  Counts were taken for 24 hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in warmer-weather conditions.  All but two of the count locations have on-street bikeway markings (bike lane, marked shared lane, or bus/bike lane).

Comparing the bike counts to 2006 vehicle counts shows that in some locations bicycles constitute a significant percent of roadway traffic (i.e. bicycles in relation to motor vehicles) – as high as 21.9 percent (at 640 N. Milwaukee Ave. in September).

Seventeen of the 26 count locations recorded more than 200 daily cyclists, with the highest count (again, at 640 N. Milwaukee Ave.) being 3,121 cyclists.

The U.S. DOT Federal Railroad Administration Office of Railroad Safety issued draft guidance to railroads concerning pedestrian safety.  The document includes strategies and methods to prevent pedestrian accidents, incidents, injuries, and fatalities at or near passenger rail stations.  The report uses hazard analysis methods to evaluate the risk associated with the movement of pedestrians at or near passenger stations in light of the history of crashes that have resulted in serious pedestrian injuries and fatalities.  The report considers:

• Train-borne audible and visual warnings.
• Station-sited audible and visual warnings.
• Swing gates.
• ADA accessibility.

[Photo "Fast Trains" by Eric Alixx Rogers on Flickr.]

According to a Chicago Tribune article (written by Jon Hilkevitch on January 9, 2011), Chicago is considering additional “road diets,” which reduce the number of through travel lanes to make room for turning lanes and accommodations for walkers and cyclists. The article describes a potential project now being studied on Lawrence Avenue in the Lincoln Square neighborhood and presents the viewpoints of the local Chamber of Commerce and the Alderman, as well as traffic concerns that the City of Chicago Department of Transportation will need to address in its project studies.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) will present a webinar in its Livable Communities Webinar Series entitled, “FHWA Resources for Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals,” on Tuesday, March 1, 2011, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. CST.  The webinar will provide an overview of tools and resources available to communities to enhance walking and bicycling in their local area.

Presenters include:

• Dan Nabors, Senior Transportation Engineer at Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc.,
• Charlie Zegeer, Director, Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center
• Libby Thomas, Research Associate, UNC Highway Safety Research Center
• Tamara Redmon, Pedestrian/Bike Safety Team Leader, FHWA

Bridges are critical parts of most communities’ transportation networks, and making sure they safely accommodate people on foot or on bike allows for expanded mobility and transportation choice, as well as increased safety.  A new report from the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) shows how to successfully advocate for “complete” bridges, including lessons learned from several campaigns.

The second in a series of webinars sponsored by the American Public Health Association (APHA) on the ways in which transportation systems impact public health will take place February 15, 2011, from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. CST.  The webinar is entitled “The Health Benefits from Active Transportation.”   It is free, but registration is required. 

Two more webinars – one in March and one April – will complete the series:

1. Health Impact Assessments (HIAS) in Transportation (Tuesday, March 15, 1:00 to 2:00p.m. CDT)
2. Preventing Roadway Fatalities and Injuries (Tuesday, April 5, 1:00 to 2:00p.m. CDT)

CMAP will present the upcoming Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) webinar entitled “Complete Streets: State of the Practice” on Wednesday, February 16, 2011, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.

The webinar is free.  However, we have limited seating and will limit participation to the first 24 persons who RSVP in response to this post.  If you are interested in attending, please email John O’Neal at joneal@cmap.illinois.gov to reserve your spot.  If space is still available, then he will respond with instructions on attending. 

The webinar will examine the current state of the practice for complete streets. Topics will include:

• How support for complete streets is strengthened as collaboration with public health, transit, and other partners increases.
• A comparison of existing policies and how they match up to guidelines from the National Complete Streets Coalition.
• Examples of best practice at the local and state level.

The webinar will include a presentation on Charlotte, N.C.’s award-winning Urban Streets Design Guidelines and will look at how the city is implementing requirements for developers, which complement the use of public funds in building complete streets.

FHWA has published a TechBrief, summarizing a study whose purpose was to evaluate the impact of several uses of shared-lane pavement markings – specifically the “sharrow” design – on operational and safety measures for bicyclists and motorists.  Experiments were conducted in Cambridge, MA; Chapel Hill, NC; and Seattle, WA.  The study concludes that, “sharrows can be used in a variety of situations, and increased use should enhance motorist awareness of bicyclists or the possibility of bicyclists in the traffic stream. Results indicate that sharrows increased operating space for bicyclists.  Sharrows have reduced sidewalk riding not only in the current study but also in a previous study in Gainesville, FL.”