Pedestrian and Bicyclist Data: Challenges and Opportunities

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Pedestrian and Bicyclist DataChallenges and
Opportunities

• Shawn Turner
• Texas Transportation Institute
• TRB Annual MeetingSession 425
• Washington, DC January 12, 2010

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Overview

• What does ped-bike data mean?
• Why is it important?
• What are the challenges?
• What are the opportunities?

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Bicycle and Pedestrian Data

• Usage, trip user characteristics
• Counts, surveys
• Facilities (inventory)
• LOS, quality of travel
• Crash safety data
• User preferences
• Secondary data
• Research and evaluation data

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Why is walking and cyclingdata important?

• What gets measured, gets done
• If youre not counted, you dont count
• Same reasons as for other modes
• Support policy decisions/changes
• Plan for cost-effective investments
• Design safe facilities and infrastructure
• Measure performance and progress toward goals

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Portland Examples
Source US Census, prepared by Roger Geller, City
of Portland
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Portland Examples
Source Roger Geller, City of Portland
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Portland Examples
Source Roger Geller, City of Portland
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Portland Examples
Source Roger Geller, City of Portland
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Challenges

• The forgotten modes (Tom Larson)
• Typically lower priority, fewer resources
• Typically small numbers, high variability
• Typically on city streets, not major highways
• Difficult to automatically count/measure
• Scale of facilities

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Opportunities and Advances - 1

• Grassroots efforts from within the
  pedestrian/bicyclist community

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Opportunities and Advances - 2

• Map and navigation industry efforts

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Opportunities and Advances - 2

• Map and navigation industry efforts

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Opportunities and Advances - 2

• Map and navigation industry efforts

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Opportunities and Advances - 3

• Pocket-sized, location-aware mobile devices
  crowdsourcing and social media

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Opportunities and Advances - 3

• Pocket-sized, location-aware mobile devices
  crowdsourcing and social media

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Opportunities and Advances - 3
Source Jennifer Dill, Portland State Univ.
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Concluding Thoughts

• Progress is being made
• Exploit available technology
• Dont let perfect data be the enemy of good data

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Questions??