Recent its_tsc_webinars items

SafeTREC Seminar Nov.13: The commitment of the IDB on Road Safety

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

SafeTREC Seminar on the commitment of the IDB on Road Safety.

New GIS Mapping Features in TIMS Feb 22, 2013

Mon, 20 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This is a recording of a presentation made by SafeTREC GIS Project Manager John Bigham explaining new features to the Transportation Injury Mapping System website, tims.berkeley.edu

SafeTREC - UCTC Seminar: An Innovative Performance Based Approach to the Health Impacts of Transit Investments

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The epidemic of obesity and increased health care costs is a growing issue that is no longer confined to the public health field. Transportation agencies have begun to examine the impact of projects on public health. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission conducted a first of its kind benefit cost analysis of projects to be considered in the long range Regional Transportation Plan (RTP). This performance assessment of transportation investments was conducted to assess the impacts of projects on levels of transit and walking and biking. Bay Area residents that received increases in active transportation from specific transportation investments and resulted in meeting or exceeding the U.S. Surgeon General's recommendation of approximately 30 minutes daily had a health care savings compared to inactive residents. The benefits of active transportation range from $55 million for investments in bicycle infrastructure projects to $500,000 for transit projects where the increase in...

Giving cycling the green light: An overview of transportation in Ireland and the design of the National Cycle Network

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Similarly to the US, driving a car to work continues to gain ground in Ireland and the country is presented with major challenges in environment and health as a consequence. In safety, at least, Ireland has had some major successes. In 40 years, the number of fatalities has fallen from 640 to 162, a drop of 75%. Such improvements in road safety have been attributed to a combination of education, enforcement and engineering. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities have each fallen by 66% in 20 years, however, this could be attributed to the lower numbers of people walking and cycling. Nevertheless, disproportionate numbers of pedestrians and cyclists are killed and injured on Ireland’s roads.

A 2,000 km National Cycle Network (NCN) was proposed in 2010 as part of a cycle policy which targets a 10% cycle commuting share by 2020. The NCN will be modelled on international networks, will be predominantly inter-urban and greenway based, and forms part of EuroVelo, the European Cycle...

Crash Rates & Risks: The Role of Vehicle Design (& Type), Driver Habits, & Demographics

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Traffic fatalities are responsible for 1.3 million deaths annually, worldwide, & 16 percent of all Americans dying between the ages of 1 & 44 (WHO 2010, Xu et al. 2010). Crash rates & consequences can be examined from multiple perspectives, reflecting characteristics of the drivers & passengers, their vehicles, home locations, & crash settings. This presentation focuses on crash risks & injury severities as a function of driver & vehicle characteristics & other factors. For example, heteroscedastic ordered probit models distinguish the effects of vehicle weight, footprint & height on the severity of injuries sustained by vehicle occupants in the U.S. General Estimates Systems data sets (while controlling for many additional attributes). A survey of over 1,000 Americans was employed to analyze the impact of driving habits & distances, citation histories, vehicle ownership, & demographics on crash histories & risk. Lastly, data on...

SafeTREC - UCTC Seminar: Post CEQA Traffic Analysis for New Bikeways

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

As California works on new guidelines to address transportation projects and CEQA, cities will still need to address the issue aside from CEQA of what level of traffic delay is appropriate to study when designing new bikeways and making pedestrian improvements. If CEQA shifts to vehicle miles traveled or auto trips generated, bikeway projects will essentially be exempt. Yet more than an exemption will be needed to satisfy public concerns. Traffic engineers' responsibilities are changing from 'moving traffic' to designing complete streets, but the solutions are always a compromise, particularly in urban, built-out areas. Bike East Bay (formerly East Bay Bicycle Coalition) is proposing a switch to limiting traffic delay studies to an analysis of how to minimize potential delays on roadways with new proposed bikeways--i.e. no longer using an uncomfortable level of delay as an excuse to block implementation of safe bikeways. Cities in the East Bay such as Concord, Dublin, El Cerrito,...

Methods and Technologies for Pedestrian and Bicycle Volume Data Collection

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In this talk, an overview of the recently completed National Cooperative Highways Research Program project 07-19 will be presented. In NCHRP 07-19, research was conducted on a variety of methods and technologies for collecting bicyclist and pedestrian volume data. Research included a practitioner's survey, in-depth interviews with count program managers, and field testing and accuracy evaluation of six counting technologies. Counters were installed at roughly 15 different sites and evaluated for precision and reliability. The main product of this project is a guidebook on conducting counts of pedestrians and bicyclists, to be published in early 2015.

Teens, Technology, and Transportation: An exploration of the digital lives of high schoolers

Sun, 12 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

In the face of increasing sprawl and car-dependence in US metropolitan areas, young people – especially teens in middle-class suburbs – may be experiencing new mobilities generated by their near-universal adoption of cell phones and increasing access to private automobiles. The growth in the adoption of hand-held mobile devices that can be used for communication and information may enhance accessibility and independent mobility for certain segments of the youth population, especially those in higher socio-economic status households. In a project with teens in two high schools in Chittenden County, Vermont, we used a mix of methods to explore the rapid changes in teens’ lives fostered by tools such as cell phones, texting, mobile internet access, and various forms of messaging. In this study, we find that millennial teens use digital devices to construct new intersections between communication, information, and transportation. By also actively employing these devices in our research,...

Transportation Policy in Oakland: As It Is and as It Should Be

Sat, 11 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Oakland has more BART stations than any other Bay Area jurisdiction, numerous mixed-use neighborhoods, and one of the highest bike-to-work mode shares in the country. Yet, the City has failed to fully take advantage of these natural advantages, partially due to the lack of a cohesive vision for the role transportation should play in the lives of Oaklanders. Oakland passed a Complete Streets Policy in 2013 that will allow the City to consider transportation decisions from a broader perspective. The presentation will share updates on several on-going complete streets initiatives, including analysis of crash trends Citywide, data management, CEQA reform, and experiments with green paint and temporary spaces. The presentation will also identify key knowledge gaps as suggested topics for future urban transportation research.

CA 13 Data Webinar

Sat, 11 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

SafeTREC webinar on Challenge Area 13 regarding Bicycle Safety data.

SafeTREC Seminar 5/1/15: Interventions for Alcohol Related Traffic Injuries and Deaths

Tue, 12 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Despite many decades of prevention efforts, alcohol related traffic injuries and deaths due to drinking and drunken driving remain major problems in communities throughout the US. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) has recently sponsored an extensive study of the etiology of these problems across mid-size cities in California and is currently supporting an evaluation of community-based environmental preventive interventions intended to reduce these problems in 24 of these cities. One of the primary concerns of these studies has been to identify the ecological causes and correlates of drinking and drunken driving in order to better tailor prevention efforts. If we can identify the primary sources of drinking drivers in community settings, we can tailor prevention efforts to drinkers in those settings and develop effective behavioral ecological interventions. The challenges are to develop a comprehensive representation of sources of drinking and drunken...

Tess Lengyel, SafeTREC Seminar Dec 12: Policy and Planning at the Alameda County Transportation Commission

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Tess Lengyel, Alameda County Transportation Commission’s Deputy Director of Planning and Policy, will discuss development of the local sales tax measure and the context within which it was developed; what it funds overall, including the significant amount of funding for bicycle and pedestrian investments, including safety educational programs; information about other long-range planning efforts that also support safety; information about BPAC and PAPCO – both of these community advisory committees address walking and biking and safety needs; what some of the differences were between the 2012 plan and the 2014 plan; and how the 2014 plan passed in November 2014.

Frank Proulx, NCHRP 07-19: Methods and Technologies for Pedestrian and Bicycle Volume Data Collection

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: In this talk, an overview of the recently completed National Cooperative Highways Research Program project 07-19 will be presented. In NCHRP 07-19, research was conducted on a variety of methods and technologies for collecting bicyclist and pedestrian volume data. Research included a practitioner's survey, in-depth interviews with count program managers, and field testing and accuracy evaluation of six counting technologies. Counters were installed at roughly 15 different sites and evaluated for precision and reliability. The main product of this project is a guidebook on conducting counts of pedestrians and bicyclists, to be published in early 2015.

SafeTREC Seminar April 10: Creating Space for Bikeways: Road Diets and Parking Removal

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The City of San Jose's Active Transportation Program is in the midst of a ten-year plan to complete a 400-mile on-street bikeway network. With more than 250 miles implemented to date, most of the easier projects have been completed. Increasingly, remaining projects are faced with constrained right-of-way without enough space to accommodate a quality bicycle facility. To create space for new bikeways, San Jose has turned to the use of road diets (removal of a travel lane to create space for other features) and/or removal of on-street parking. These projects create a number of challenges including design, outreach, environmental clearance, and funding. John Brazil will share lessons learned from several recent projects including Hedding Street, Lincoln Avenue, Park Avenue, and Monterey Road.

Applying UrbanSim to Transportation Issues in Cities

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

UrbanSim(link is external) is a software-based simulation system for supporting planning and analysis of urban development, incorporating the interactions between land use, transportation, the economy, and the environment. It is the result of over 15 years of active research, and has been applied to planning processes of over a dozen regional governments and large cities. Recent improvements to UrbanSim include an accessibility engine to compute walking-scale accessibility metrics over a metropolitan area in less than a second, and the ability to run real estate pro formas on the complete set of parcels in a region to understand real estate development feasibility the way a developer might. The new methodology has also received interest from the travel modeling community, and a consortium of regions has funded a pilot to create an activity-based travel model using the same core framework.

Synthicity(link...

Vision Zero, SF

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Many of San Francisco’s streets are dangerous by design. Each day in the city, at least three people walking are hit by cars. In 2013, a near-record number of people were killed while walking and biking: 21 pedestrians and four bicyclists were victims of lethal traffic crimes–including six year-old Sofia Liu(link is external) and an 86 year old man who were both killed in crosswalks–the highest number since 2007. In response to increasing number of traffic-related injuries and deaths, Walk SF, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and a coalition of over 30 community organizations called on City leaders and agencies to formally adopt Vision Zero policies that include funding and implementing critical engineering, enforcement, and education efforts. This presentation will tell the story of year one of Vision Zero in San Francisco and where the City is headed in year two.

Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans in Post-War Suburban Communities

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Post-war suburban communities were designed for efficient vehicle travel with little consideration for walking and bicycling. Developing master plans for these communities requires a context-sensitive approach, a large toolbox, and broad outreach strategies. Jennifer Donlon Wyant will talk about recent master plan developments in California communities and the lessons learned.

Chinese Road Safety and Driver Behavior Research

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The seminar will begin with a brief overview of the Chinese road safety situation, including current safety problems, and then move on to discuss safety research including driver behavior, freeway operational safety, and infrastructure development.

Improving Traffic Safety Culture Through California’s SHSP

Fri, 30 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

For approximately a decade, researchers in industry, academia, and government have been working to extend the idea of “safety culture” to the field of traffic injury control. This involves, among other tasks, a substantial effort at translating theory and concepts from one field to another. It also involves educating stakeholders in a new vocabulary and (potentially) a new set of approaches to one of our society’s most stubborn public health problems. This presentation will introduce the audience to traffic safety culture, focusing on practical examples and potential applications. The current efforts of the state’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan (SHSP) are described.

SafeTREC - UCTC Seminar: ODOT Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Implementation Plan

Fri, 30 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) identified bicycle and pedestrian crashes as a key safety focus area within Oregon’s Strategic Highway Safety Plan and sought to develop a plan to reduce frequency and severity of those crashes on all roadways throughout Oregon. Kittelson & Associates, Inc. (KAI) worked with ODOT to develop a Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Implementation Plan that identified systemic, low-cost countermeasures and prioritized locations for implementation of the countermeasures. Priority implementation locations were developed using two complementary systemic safety analysis methods: one targeted at locations with a history of fatal and severe crashes, and the other focused on locations with high risk of pedestrian and bicycle crashes. The risk-based systemic safety methodology, promoted by FHWA, was applied due to the low frequency of pedestrian and bicycle crashes. The Implementation Plan will inform the allocation of approximately $4 million in...

SafeTREC - UCTC Seminar: Flexible Work Schedules and Transportation Behavior at UC Berkeley

Fri, 30 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Flexible work schedules could be a solution to the problems of increasing transportation demand, congestion, energy use, and carbon emissions. The higher the flexibility of work schedule, the less time employees would spend commuting to work. Hence, reducing trip frequency and total distance traveled. Flexible work schedules have been studied extensively in transportation studies, especially in areas of peak period congestion, road pricing, transit services peak and off-peak utilization, and flexibility of departure time for work. However, fewer studies have examined how the flexibility of work schedules could affect transportation mode and parking choices. This presentation will focus on the relationship amongst work schedule flexibility, mode choice and parking preferences at the University of California, Berkeley. campus. Understanding this complex relationship will enable a better evaluation of future transportation and parking policies.

SafeTREC/UCTC Seminar: Bikeways in Berkeley

Fri, 30 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The City of Berkeley has had a Bike Plan since 1971, one of the first city bike plans in the US. The plan was comprehensively updated and expanded in the 1990's, resulting in a new Berkeley Bicycle Plan which was adopted by the Berkeley City Council in 2000. The new plan laid out Berkeley's Bicycle Boulevards which were based in part on the foundational bikeway network identified in the 1971 Plan. In Spring of 2014 the City of Berkeley will kick off the first comprehensive update of the Plan since 2000. This presentation will discuss the historical evolution of the Berkeley Bike Plan from its origins in 1971 through its role as a next-generation implementation tool of Complete Streets; trace the development of Bicycle Boulevards as the backbone of Berkeley's Bikeway Network and their success or failure as measured by bicycle counts and historical collision analysis; and conclude with a discussion of what might be next for Berkeley's bikeways and bikeway network. Design details...

Benefit Cost Analysis Applied to Behavioral and Engineering Safety Countermeasures in San Francisco

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The state of the practice in safety has advanced rapidly in recent years with the emergence of new tools and processes for improving selection of the most cost-effective safety countermeasures. However, many challenges prevent fair and objective comparisons of countermeasures applied across safety disciplines (e.g. engineering, emergency services, and behavioral measures). These countermeasures operate at different spatial scales, are funded often by different financial sources and agencies, and have associated costs and benefits that are difficult to estimate.

This research proposes a methodology by which both behavioral and engineering safety investments are considered and compared in a specific local context. The methodology involves a multi-stage process that enables the analyst to select countermeasures that yield high benefits to costs, are targeted for a particular project, and that may involve costs and benefits that accrue over varying spatial and temporal scales.

The...

Toward an integrated mobility agenda

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Mobility affects the health and well-being of a growing aging population. Although this is an important area of research, most of the work focuses on one type of mobility at a time, e.g., walking or driving or the use of passenger transport. This presentation outlines an integrated mobility agenda, which is based on the lived experiences of older adults, and examines the health effects of combinations of different modes of mobility as part of everyday life, e.g., walking and driving. The research and practice implications of this integrated approach are addressed.

Walking in San Francisco: How SF Safety and Walkability Compare to Best Practices

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

San Francisco has received recognition as one of the most walkable cities in the U.S., but also has high levels of pedestrian injuries and fatalities per capita. This talk will cover San Francisco's innovative Pedestrian Strategy and compare it to trend setters such as New York City and London.