Prediction of the Deviation between Alternative Routes and Actual Trajectories for Bicyclists

2022-06-23 | David Levinson

Recently published:

Wang, Haotian, Emily Moylan, and David M. Levinson (2022) “Prediction of the Deviation between Alternative Routes and Actual Trajectories for Bicyclists.” Findings, June. [doi].

This study estimates a panel regression model to predict bicyclist route choice. Using GPS trajectories of 600 trips from 49 participants in spring 2006 in Minneapolis, we calculate deviation, the average distance between alternative routes and actual trajectories, as the dependent variable. Trip attributes, including trip length, Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT), the number of traffic lights per kilometer, and the percentage of bike trails and separated bike lane, are included as independent variables. F-tests indicate that both fixed entity and time effect panel regression models offer better fits than the intercept-only model. According to our results, routes with shorter length and higher share of bike trails tend to have less deviation in their trajectories. Traffic lights per km, VKT, and share of bike lane are not significant at the 95% confidence level in this data set.

Figure 1. Example of Commute and Non-Commute Trips

The relation of visual perception of speed limits and the implementation of cycle lanes – a cross-country comparison

2022-06-07 | David Levinson

Recently published:

Loyola Borja, Miguel, Nelson, J., Clifton, G., and Levinson, D. (2022) The relation of visual perception of speed limits and the implementation of cycle lanes – a cross-country comparison. Accident Analysis and Prevention. Volume 174, September 2022, 106722. [doi]

ABSTRACT: Speed plays a key role in road safety research. Recent studies have indicated an association between speed limits and driving behaviour. However, less attention has been paid to the role of context in the perception of speed limits, and the way cycle lanes influence this perception. This study examines how respondents in different countries of residence perceive speed limits, and how cycle lanes influence their perception of speed limits. An online survey provided quantitative data for a cross-country comparison from 1591 respondents in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The findings show that country of residence influences the way speed limits are perceived, and cycle lanes are interpreted distinctly. In locations where cycle lanes are common, they act as indicators of either lower or higher speed limits, while in countries with less familiarity with cycle lanes respondents associate cycle lanes only with lower speed limits. Suggesting a safer and broader understanding of cycle lanes where they are familiar (the Netherlands) and a narrower understanding where cycle lanes are not common (Australia and the United Kingdom), this study provides evidence for policymakers explaining resistance to implementing cycle lanes and implies that implementing lower speed limits and cycle lanes are a road safety measure. Suggestions are identified for future research.

Fig. 1. Images before and after implementing cycle lanes, looking at the opposite side of the street (SOURCE: adapted from Google maps).

Taken for a ride | AltMedia

2019-06-212019-06-20 | David Levinson

Joan Henson writes Taken for a ride in AltMedia. My quotes below, the full interview below that.

…
Sydney lags internationally for cycling

University of Sydney Professor David Levinson has researched how the distance between commuters and stations can be shrunk by installing strategic station entry points, thus expanding commuter catchments.

As bicycle speeds can be three to four times that of walking, “many more people are in range of the station via bike.”

For safe accessibility, cyclists need entry points in low-speed residential streets and protected cycleways on high-speed roads.

In addition to better station accessibility, he says that Sydney “sorely lacks a protected bike lane network.”

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one in five Australians hospitalised for a transport-related injury from 2015-16 was a cyclist.

In early May, it was reported that the rate of injury for other road users declined from 1990-00 to 2015-16 by 1.3 per cent per year.

Over the same period there was an increase of 1.5 per cent per year transport-related injuries for cyclists, until the last six years, where the average increased to 4.4 per cent per year.

Levinson says that far fewer people cycle in Sydney than in places with better cycling infrastructure like Canberra, Portland and Minneapolis in the United States, or “most places in Europe or China,” and that changes in road rules and infrastructure could make walking and cycling more attractive alternatives.

Andrew Chuter, President of Friends of Erskineville, says that his group has started canvassing the community about building a southern entrance to Erskineville station, inspired by Redfern Station developments.

The new Ashmore Estate development, which will house about 6000 residents, presents challenges for accessing the station via walking and cycling.

“That estate accesses Erskineville Station by walking up a hill to the top of the station, and then comes back down to the platform,” he says.

“It really doesn’t make sense… to come back down to the platform.”

The City of Sydney’s Sustainable Sydney 2030 target aims for 10 per cent of all trips to the city to be made by bicycle.

In early May NSW Public Spaces Minister Rob Stokes told the Sydney Morning Herald that he was “very aware that Sydney is not a cycle-friendly city”, and wanted to work with councils and the Transport Minister to make improvements.

The full interview is below:

I watched your Tuesday Friends of Erskineville talk where you spoke about the extended catchment area that would be provided to commuters at various Sydney railway stations by building an extra entry (bringing commuters closer to stations and potential workplaces).

In your estimation, briefly, which Sydney stations could most benefit from better bicycle accessibility and why? I imagine there might be some overlap with the study you referenced at the Tuesday talk, but also unique problem areas, such as connecting to cycleways and making wider concourse entry/exit areas?

I think all stations could benefit from better bicycle accessibility, including both bicycle access routes and bike storage at stations. Bicycles expand the catchment area significantly beyond the walk catchment. Bike speeds are about 3 to 4 times as fast as walking, so in the same 5 or 10 minutes, many more people are in range of the station via bike. The issue is not just bike access to stations on safe facilities (low-speed residential streets and protected bikeways on higher speed roads), but bike access to everywhere. Sydney sorely lacks a protected-bike lane network. People say no one bikes in Sydney, and while not true of course, far fewer people bike here than in good cities for bicycling like Canberra in Australia, Portland and Minneapolis in the United States, or most places in Europe or China. Is the lack of facilities due to the lack of bicyclists, or is the lack of bicyclists due to the lack of facilities? I think at this point the latter is true. Sydney’s roads have been given over to maximising automobile throughput at the expense of all other modes, and this is socially counterproductive. The new Metro was an excellent opportunity to connect to local neighborhoods with protected bike lanes. I don’t think this opportunity was fully taken advantage of (yet). It is much easier to do this in the Western suburbs, where the rights-of-way are wider (enabling protected bike lanes to be installed with less pain), and the distances longer, making the region even more amenable to bicycling than walking.

Have you done similar catchment studies related to bicycle accessibility?

Not as such. The logic is the same though, bikes are just faster so the territory is wider. If we assume bike speeds are 3 times faster than walking, and bikes can go everywhere people on foot can, then the 15-minute walk access catchment is the 5-minute bicycle catchment.

How could Redfern station and Macdonaldtown cycling accessibility be improved?

Part of the issue at both stations is that the railway tracks act as a barrier to north-south crossing. One (or more) pedestrian/bike crossing between would be useful. There are plans for this, but they haven’t been implemented. As the new south/west entrance at Redfern is planned, this helps shorten distances, but it should be designed to accommodate crossings for both modes (without bikes having to dismount), and the entrance should provide bicycle storage for bike-to-train travelers.

Do you see problems with the Transport for NSW’s Redfern station overpass model? What about its likability to the currently in-construction Wilson st cycleway and never-made Lawson st cycleway?

The plan is still a schematic. I think it should be wide-enough to accomodate separated bike lanes.

Lawson Street, which I use daily, is a separate matter, and needs a major redesign, far too much space is given over to cars for parking, and not enough for people on foot to move when Sydney University is in session. A shared space design, with many fewer parking spaces, and slower speed limits, might be appropriate here. But again the problem from a transport perspective is the tracks act as a barrier, so too many people are channeled onto a small road. The new entrance at Redfern would reduce pedestrian demand on Lawson significantly.

Does Sydney have a problem synchronising cycling infrastructure with roads and railways? How in particular? Should changes be made and what are the priorities in your view? Is there a disconnect between state government and Sydney City Council cycling priorities? And does that confuse future infrastructure planning investments and commuters? If so, how?NSW Public Spaces Minister, Rob Stokes, recently said that the road network is shaped in a way that is not friendly to bicycle riders. The state has been reluctant to approve plans to link up cycleways in the inner city. There is no east-west cycleway in the CBD, links at King, Castlereagh, Chalmers and Liverpool streets lack state funding and approval.

Australia has given far more power to the State government, and less to local government, than most places in the United States, where I am most familiar. Given that governance structure, it is not surprising that NSW privileges the longer distance trips over shorter distance. Imagine local governments (or even a new metropolitan-level government) had more powers over local streets, they would be more responsive to local demands, and less to demands from people who would be considered non-residents (non-voters). You may periodically wind up with a sympathetic state government for bicycle issues, but structurally, it is not embedded in the system. Local governments, of whatever party, will support local travel rather than through travel.

What led you to found the Walk Sydney group? What feedback have you received?

Brigid Kelly was the main organiser of WalkSydney. I and others helped. There was no one advocating for pedestrians in Sydney, and so pedestrians get the short end of policies. I saw this especially with traffic signal timings. While Sydney is walkable from a land use perspective, there are lots of adjacent activities and interesting things to see. The footpaths are decaying, and the delays for those on foot so that cars don’t have to stop are appalling. The road rules favour cars rather than pedestrians in a way that is strange.

I was previously involved in establishing and chairing the streets.mn group in Minnesota, which provided a forum for discussion of transport and land use issues, and grew to be a pretty successful website and community that influenced public perception of transport and land use questions. Minneapolis has become much more progressive on these issues since we started talking in a coherent way about them.

I think Sydney needs something similar, that brings together intelligent people discussing the transport and land use problems here in a civilised forum. There are lots of small advocacy groups, but no strong voice, and no one looking systematically at the problem multi-modally.

What are the most pressing safety concerns for you for cyclists on Sydney transport networks?

Crash and fatality rates in Australia are higher for cyclists than many other countries. We need to ask why. And then we need consider whether the putative safety solutions with heavy fines are important to improve safety or just ’safety theatre’. It’s not like we can’t learn from other countries that have a much safer environment, and import their strategies. Some of this is driver education and behaviour and enforcement, but most of this is road rules (which are especially hostile to pedestrians here and give drivers an expanded perception of their privilege) and infrastructure (protected bike lanes, wombat crossings for pedestrians and cyclists), things that can be directly affected by pubic decisions.

Where do you see thefuture of transport alternatives in Sydney, like cycling, walking and new alternatives like shared electric scooters, Lime Bikes (after failure of share-bike predecessors)?

I think walking remains the most important of the set you gave, followed by bicycles and e-bikes. I see more privately owned e-scooters/e-skateboards around. Dockless Bike share (and scooter share) did not work here the first time around. The issues are in part for the shared bikes/e-bikes/e-scooters etc. are that people who are using them are traveling faster than walking, so shouldn’t be on footpaths generally, but not as fast as cars (or feel unsafe doing so) so don’t want to use streets. Thus, without a comfortable place to use the device, prospective users aren’t going to rent bikes (or scooters). So this gets back to infrastructure. The companies are doing what companies should do, explore the market. But as they have learned, the market environment here unfortunately isn’t ready for them.

On the Four Paths

2018-08-152020-01-02 | David Levinson

timeless — Photo by Jesse Vermeulen, posted at Unsplash.

First Path

In the beginning was the path. It was undifferentiated, shared by people and animals alike, and eventually wheeled vehicles pulled by humans and animals. While dating the First Path is impossible — the very first First Path must have been a path that was reused once, and slightly better than the unimproved space around it — it operated both in early settlements and on routes connecting nearby settlements.

Today’s version of that is the sidewalk or footpath. It is now used for people walking, sometimes for people moving goods, and occasionally for people on scooters and bicycles. It should not be used for storing cars, though it is. New uses will include low speed delivery robots, as shown in the photo from Starship.

When we see a raised crosswalk, we know the First Path is given the pre-eminance its venerable status warrants. When we see shared spaces, we know those harken back to the early undifferentiated path-spaces of earlier centuries. When we see pedestrian-only zones, we see a First Path that has grown up.

Second Path

The Second Path diverges from the first path with the emergence of the first street or roads with sidewalks (footpaths). Spiro Kostof (1992) dates it to about 2000 BCE in Anatolia. And it is clear many Roman and Greek cities separated sidewalks from streets, which the Romans called Semita.

Post-Rome, sidewalks were rare, making appearances in London after the Great Fire, and in Paris after Haussman.

But to be clear, today’s sidewalk is not the second path, it is the first. The second path is the road which is largely free of pedestrians, intended for the movement of vehicles. Originally these were animal powered vehicles, as well as human. Later fuel-powered machines took over the street and roads.

It is easier for a **camel** to go through the **eye** of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Third Path

The Third Path actually emerged well before the Second Path was colonized by motorized vehicles. It is for bicycles, and initially was paved in contrast with the unpaved streets and roads of its time. Given the first Velocipede was only 1817, and the first bike chain (which we associate with modern bicycles) was 1885, these came relatively quickly compared with the First and Second Paths. While ascertaining the first bike lane or separated bike path is tricky (there are many claims, differing in nuance), I have compiled some claimed firsts and earlies here (thanks to people who replied on Twitter):

Maliebaan, Utrecht, Netherlands (1885)
Seattle, 1890s
Copenhagen, Denmark Esplanaden (1892)
US Good Roads Movement (1880s-1920s)
Brooklyn, Ocean Parkway (1894)
St. Paul, Minnesota – Summit Avenue boulevard (1896)
Cyclists Avenue was opened in Centennial Park, Sydney in 1900
Oldest continuously operating bike lane (since 1907) in Germany
Davis, California (1966)

While bike lanes have now been around as a technology for well more than a century, throughout most of North America and Australia, bike lanes are not provisioned, so bicyclists have the Hobson’s Choice of driving in traffic with much heavier and much faster automobiles and trucks on the Second Path, the roadbed or illegally in many cases on the First Path, the sidewalk.

With the advent of the smart phone, new modes are becoming feasible, most notably dockless shared bikes and scooters.

Regulations in many places limit the use of bikes on footpaths. The reasons for this are clear from the pedestrian’s point of view, bikes are traveling up to 4 times faster than walkers, and collision can create injury. Dockless shared bikes emerged in Australia in 2017, after a few years on the road in China. Their main contribution has however not been transport (they are used about once every 3 days) but instead as a the recipient of complaint about sidewalk clutter (unlike say cars, which are always parked perfectly). As a consequences they have been targets of vandalism. The obvious solution will eventually get adopted, geofenced corrals for parking bikes (shared and private), taking away one parking space per block perhaps.

Given the disparities of speeds on the first (5 km/h) and second paths (30-120 km/h), there is a clear market niche for an infrastructure network for vehicles faster than foot and slower than cars. Physically, one imagines it generally lying between the existing kerb and removing a lane now devoted to the storage or movement of cars. And for many if not most urban places globally, this has been recognized and networks of third paths have been, or will be, built out.

This Third Path is important not just for bikes, but for electric bikes (which are becoming increasingly feasible with progress in battery technology) and electric scooters.

Fourth Path

A Fourth Path for buses (and other high occupancy vehicles) is also now considered. The first bus lane emerged in Chicago in 1940. The reason for bus lanes again is in part operational differences compared with existing road users. Buses start and stop in traffic much more frequently than cars. But a second reason is in fact the opposite, not because buses would block cars, but because cars would block buses. Buses carry more passengers than cars, and so should move faster, and can do so if they are not stuck in queues behind cars.

Interfaces

The Kerb – Once a nondescript piece of concrete now forms the edge (both physically and metaphorically) of the sharing economy: taxis, Ubers, autonomous mobility services. The Kerbspace differentiates and separates paths, but we now have new questions:

Who manages kerbspace?
How is it regulated?
Is it even mapped?

Comp(l)ete Streets

The complete streets movement advocates for streets with sidewalks, bike paths, and are otherwise designed to promote safety and efficiency. The figure below is not exactly what they have in mind.

JusticiaUrbana — Justicia Urbana by Todorovic (https://www.flickr.com/photos/unhabitat/23003427510)

Comments on Sydney’s Cycling Strategy and Action Plan 2018-2030

2018-07-272018-07-26 | David Levinson

Sydney has released its Cycling Strategy and Action Plan for public comment. Mine are below:

I am pleased to see Sydney hopes to be a more bicycle friendly place. However the plan as laid out is insufficiently ambitious. So much more can and should be done. Sydney should be one of the world leaders in bicycling, but it remains a laggard, stuck in the mid-20th century. A 10% target in 2030 (3-4x as many bicyclists as today) is good (better than today’s baseline), but the network doesn’t support that, it is not 3-4x as large.

To start, think about the network: Every major street (say a street that warrants a traffic signals) which also has on-street parking has demonstrated space for separated bike lanes. What is more important, storing cars 23 hours a day or moving people? The value of the network increases non-linearly with its connectivity. Even most streets without on-street parking have space for bike lanes.

Among these which I am familiar with should be included Regent St/Gibbons St/Wyndham St and Abercrombie/Wattle, but there are undoubtedly more. The separated bike lane network should be as dense and complete as the arterial street network.*

Similarly, every block that has on-street parking should dedicate at least one parking space to bicycle parking, particularly for shared bikes. Action 1.5 is especially lagging. Bike parking is cheap to install and signals priorities and should lead rather than follow.

Bikesharing is neglected from this plan.

Regulation is still hostile to bicyclists, including heavy fines and futile helmet laws. Helmets are indicator of danger. Biking should be normalised as in Europe.

A strategy for promoting and regulating eBikes would be good. Also promoting and regulating scooters, skateboards, and other wheeled vehicles (micro-mobility).

A strategy for promoting bike and ride to train and metro stations would be good.

A strategy for promoting biking to school (and Uni) would be good. Schools are at least mentioned, but it seems mostly an afterthought.

Bikes should be counted continuously at intersections (not just 2 times a year), just as cars are. There are technologies to do this, and RMS can be called on to do it. Electronic signs displaying bike counts on key routes is also a good marketing tool.

*Note: The base map p. 17 locates the Metro stations in the wrong place. The map does not distinguish between shared paths and separated bike lanes, which is a way of claiming credit for something that doesn’t actually exist.

Safety in Numbers: Pedestrian and Bicyclist Activity and Safety in Minneapolis

2018-03-282018-03-25 | David Levinson

Recent Report:

Carlson, Kristin; Murphy, Brendan; Ermagun, Alireza; Levinson, David; Owen, Andrew. (2018). Safety in Numbers: Pedestrian and Bicyclist Activity and Safety in Minneapolis. Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota. Series/Report Number CTS 18-05. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy,
http://hdl.handle.net/11299/194707.

Abstract

This investigation aims to evaluate whether the Safety in Numbers phenomenon is observable in the midwestern U.S. city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Safety in Numbers (SIN) refers to the phenomenon that pedestrian safety is positively correlated with increased pedestrian traffic in a given area. Walking and bicycling are increasingly becoming important transportation modes in modern cities. Proper placement of non-motorized facilities and improvements has implications for safety, accessibility, and mode choice, but proper information regarding estimated non-motorized traffic levels is needed to locate areas where investments can have the greatest impact. Assessment of collision risk between automobiles and non-motorized travelers offers a tool that can help inform investments to improve non-motorized traveler safety. Models of non-motorized crash risk typically require detailed historical multimodal crash and traffic volume data, but many cities do not have dense datasets of non-motorized transport flow levels. Methods of estimating pedestrian and bicycle behavior that do not rely heavily on high-resolution count data are applied in this study. Pedestrian and cyclist traffic counts, average automobile traffic, and crash data from the city of Minneapolis are used to build models of crash frequencies at the intersection level as a function of modal traffic inputs. These models determine whether the SIN effect is observable within the available datasets for pedestrians, cyclists, and cars, as well as determine specific locations within Minneapolis where non-motorized travelers experience elevated levels of risk of crashes with automobiles.

Recent publications from this report include:

Murphy, Brendan, David M. Levinson, and Andrew Owen (2017) Evaluating the Safety In Numbers effect for pedestrians at urban intersections. Accident Analysis & Prevention Volume 106, September 2017, Pages 181–190. [doi]
Carlson, Kristin, Murphy, Brendan, Owen, Andrew, Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2018) Safety in Numbers and Safety in Congestion for Bicyclists and Motorists at Urban Intersections (*) (Working Paper).
Murphy, B., D. Levinson, and A. Owen (2016) Accessibility and Centrality Based Estimation of Urban Pedestrian Activity. Presented at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016.

Safety in Numbers and Safety in Congestion for Bicyclists and Motorists at Urban Intersections

2017-09-152017-09-06 | David Levinson

Recent working paper:

Carlson, Kristin, Murphy, Brendan, Owen, Andrew, Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2018) Safety in Numbers and Safety in Congestion for Bicyclists and Motorists at Urban Intersections

The rate of number of crashes to traffic flow

This study assesses the estimated crashes per bicyclist and per vehicle as a function of bicyclist and vehicle traffic, and tests whether greater traffic reduces the per-car crash rate. We present a framework for comprehensive bicyclist risk assessment modeling, using estimated bicyclist flow per intersection, observed vehicle flow, and crash records. Using a two-part model of crashes, we reveal that both the annual average daily traffic and daily bicyclist traffic have a diminishing return to scale in crashes. This accentuates the positive role of safety in numbers. Increasing the number of vehicles and cyclists decelerates not only the probability of crashes, but the number of crashes as well. Measuring the elasticity of the variables, it is found that a 1% increase in the annual average daily motor vehicle traffic increases the probability of crashes by 0.14% and the number of crashes by 0.80%. However, a 1% increase in the average daily bicyclist traffic increases the probability of crashes by 0.09% and the number of crashes by 0.50%. The saturation point of the safety in numbers for bicyclists is notably less than for motor vehicles. Extracting the vertex point of the parabola functions examines that the number of crashes starts decreasing when daily vehicle and bicyclist traffic per intersection exceed 29,568 and 1,532, respectively.