As Part 3 of its Pedestrian Safety Action Plan webinar series, the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) will offer the webinar, Data Collection and Analysis.  The webinar will be taught by Charlie Zegeer, Director, PBIC.

This webinar will outline various processes for collecting and analyzing pedestrian data.  Specific topics include an overview of different types of data that can be collected – including police reports, facility inventories, and observational behavior data – as well as guidelines for collecting that data.

The webinar takes place today, May 18 at 1:00 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.

As part of their Professional Development Webinar Series, the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) is presenting the webinar, “Using Social Media to Improve Bicycle and Pedestrian Facilities.”  The webinar takes place Wednesday, May 18, 2011 from 2:00 to 3:00 pm CDT.

The webinar will include a brief explanation of different tools and their uses, a discussion of policies and best practices for managing content, and case studies where social media has helped improve bike/ped facilities and conditions: 1.  Bike|Walk|Idaho, 2. the NE 125th Street road diet project in Seattle, and 3. Cascade Bicycle Club's BikeWise.org project.

PDH credits will be available.  The cost is $50 per site for APBP members, $75 per site for non-APBP members. For more information and to register online, visit the APBP website.

The Children’s Memorial Research Center published a report and Data Brief analyzing injuries to children and adolescents as a result of motor vehicle crashes.  The report looks at hospitalization rates and deaths across the state and within the City of Chicago.  The data analyzed include injuries to individuals riding in the car (occupant injuries) and individuals who are hit by a car (pedestrian injuries).  Bicycle injures are not included (see the earlier Child Health Data Lab Data Brief titled “Sports-Related Injuries”).

Noteworthy findings of the report include:

• Although the death rate has remained somewhat steady, the hospitalization rate for children and adolescents resulting from motor vehicle injuries has declined since 2000.
• Boys are about 50 percent more likely to be hospitalized for a motor vehicle crash than girls, especially for pedestrian injuries.
• Adolescents (15 to19 years of age) are more than three times as likely as younger children to be hospitalized from a motor vehicle crash.
• The Marion, IL and Edwardsville, IL regions have the highest rate of motor vehicle crash hospitalizations.
• In Chicago, pedestrian injury is the leading cause of motorvehicle crash hospitalization.

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 Transportation Research Board and Region 2 University Transportation Research Center (City College of New York) has released a new report exploring and analyzing trends in cycling levels, safety, facility provision, and policies in eight cities in Canada and the U.S. over the past two decades – Chicago, Minneapolis, Montréal, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Asking whether there has been a “bicycling renaissance” in North America, the authors conclude that “cycling has certainly been on the rise in most parts of the U.S. and Canada.  The boom in cycling, however, has been limited to a few dozen cities which have implemented a wide range of programs to aggressively promote cycling,” and “even in those cities, cycling growth has been highly concentrated in the central cities, and especially in gentrifying neighborhoods near the CBD and university districts, while cycling remains at very low levels in most suburbs.”

According to the authors, the few large North American cities where we can speak of a ‘bicycling renaissance’ remain “islands in a sea of car-dominance” which “offer superb examples that other cities can follow. 

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.

Governor Pat Quinn has announced that the state will begin to track “dooring” crashes, which occur when the door of a parked vehicle is opened in the path of a bicyclist.  Previously, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) policy excluded dooring crashes from annual state traffic accident statistics because the motor vehicles involved in such collisions are not moving.  The issuegained prominence when Jon Hilkevitch of the Chicago Tribune reported on it last month.

The new rules, which take effect immediately, require police to record all dooring accidents on their traffic crash forms.  The dooring data will be incorporated into annual crash summaries and reports compiled and prepared by IDOT.

This is a significant step as many communities are investing in bike lanes and shared lane pavement markings that are often deployed to reduce dooring crashes.  Having better data on dooring will help to identify the best locations for such markings and may improve the effectiveness of such expenditures.

Advocacy Advance, formed in 2009, is a partnership between the Alliance for Biking & Walking and the League of American Bicyclists to boost local and state bicycle and pedestrian advocacy efforts.  With support from SRAM Corporation, Advocacy Advance offers grants intended to enable state and local bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations to develop, transform, and provide innovative strategies in their communities.  The program divides grants into three types:

·  Model Grants

·  Rapid Response Grants

·  Capacity Building Grants

For more information on the program, including deadlines and submission requirements, visit the Advocacy Advance website.

May is National Bike Month.  As primary sponsors of this event, the League of American Bicyclists has several tools to help organizations and individuals plan and promote Bike Month events.  Available for free download are the League’s Bike Month Organizers Kit, promotional posters, and logos and web banners.   The League of American Bicyclists is also hosting a webpage on which Bike Month events – whether being organized by communities, businesses, or schools – can be listed.  This events webpage will be searchable by state, city, and zip code.

 While National Bike Month is May, remember that Bike Chicago runs all summer long – for five months.  Chicago’s Bike-to-Work Week will be June 13 to 17, 2011.

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.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) has a new web-based tool to assist individuals and communities that want to promote commuting by bicycle.  The website provides resources for planning and holding a bike-to-work event. The resources section includes downloads for event organizers, tips for individual riders, facts for the news media as well as information for employers and sponsors. The website also features a discussion forum that allows bike commuters to network with one another. Using this forum, you can post questions about how to get a bike-to-work event off the ground, offer your tips for holding a successful event, or discuss issues of bicycle commuting generally.

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.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently released two new fact sheets summarizing recent bicycle and pedestrian crash data for 2009.  The fact sheets present and analyze 2009 bike and ped crash data and compare it to previous years.  The factsheets can be read and downloaded at 2009 Pedestrians Safety Traffic Facts and 2009 Bicyclists Safety Traffic Facts.  Nationwide, both pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities declined substantially.

The Safe Routes to School National Partnership published a guide to curricula teaching bicycle and pedestrian safety.  The guide is designed to be used by educational practitioners and policy makers, government employees, parents, and students.

In its first two sections, the guide provides background and tips for systematic implementation of bicycle and pedestrian safety education.  The ‘Policies and Funding’ and the ‘Description of Categories’ sections will help teachers, parents, after-school instructors, bike club leaders, and bicycle and pedestrian professionals choose a curriculum that meets their needs.  The ‘Inventory’ section contains a matrix of basic information regarding various curricula around the country.  These are then described in more detail in the ‘Summary’ section, which offers one-page snapshots of each program, as well as a links to more information. 

Active Transportation Alliance has a website devoted to sharing information on Lakefront Trail conditions.  The website offers regular updates on the trail, including trail conditions, lakefront events and activities that impact the trail, detours, and trail-related news. The information comes from Active Trans staff, partners, and everyday trail users.  You can also follow updates to the webpage via Twitter: @activetransLFT, or on your phone by texting “follow activetransLFT” to 40404.

Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, delivered the keynote address at this year’s Bike Summit in Washington D.C.  His main message was simple: “We have work to do” – in order to raise awareness among elected officials and all citizens of the economic, transportation, health, and environmental benefits of cycling and pedestrian investments. You can read his post about the Summit on his blog, Fastlane.dot.com.