Distribution :
I attended the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Commission meeting on 03/20, and I am glad to join this meeting to learn many new things. It talks more about how to improve the greenways and traffic issues and gives more advice to protect the traffic condition for people and the city. Then, let more people know how important it is to care for and protect our traffic conditions in a city because it will affect our overall effectiveness in that area for a long time. And, these people also provided their suggestions to improve the city roads condition to make these roads great. But, there are some issues that they still need to consider because some suggestions are not very fit for their project, and they need more details to think about how to provide a great plan to fix this project and provide a comfortable environment for people driving in their living.
Meeting people:
There are some commission members, such as Zach, Rob Danceman, Mitch, and hing Duncan, etc. Also, have some residents and some other people to visit this meeting.
Meeting location:
This meeting location is City Hall-1-Cityhall Council Chambers. And, they are through Zoom to talk about their topic in this meeting.
Meeting record:
- This project is called 7-line to update this project condition to more deeply think about some issues in the future to prevent these problems from happening. They are considering increasing the public transit corridor use rate and making transportation high value to use these roads because they think it can give people more space to drive and not waste time waiting for other people to park their parking lots on the street. Then, they are trying to reduce the stop signs to let people stop because it could make traffic congestion, people need to spend lots of time waiting for the stop sign and it is not very highly effective to let people drive on the road. Also, they try to re-design the road shapes because some roads do not have good designs, which will make people not comfortable driving on the roads and some traffic congestion is the cause of this issue. This meeting tries to make roads have high-value effectively, and it also could increase other parts of a city, like this paper says, “Therefore, livability can be seen as an organizing principle for determining when and how to deploy integrated transportation and land use planning strategies. A practical handbook and a calculator for building livable transit corridors are introduced; both were designed to empower practitioners and members of the public to equitably achieve higher levels of livability at local and regional scales.” (Appleyard et al, 2017).
- Also. another project talks about how the danger to the pedestrian crossing the roads and also it will be like a stop sign to affect the car driven. It makes people driven to spend time waiting for people to cross the streets, it is not good to help people fast driven through the street, and there are many factors will make the roads have block issue to stop people drive, like this paper say “most significant predictors which influenced the pedestrian’s waiting time and the frequency of attempts to cross the streets were gender, age, number of children in household, crossing frequency, number of people in the group attempting to cross, access to private vehicle, destination, home location in relation to pedestrian crossing, and pedestrian past involvement in traffic accidents. In addition to these predictors, maximum likelihood estimates revealed that the pedestrian expected waiting time seems to profoundly influence the number of attempts needed to successfully cross the street (divided or undivided). ” (Hamed, 2001). Therefore, providing a safe place to people cross is important, it will give both sides the benefit to safety of their time and life, “Furthermore, results relating to pedestrian crossings on divided streets indicate that the pedestrian’s expected waiting time when crossing from one side of the street to the central refuge island seem to increase the risk to end the waiting time when crossing from the refuge island to the other side of the street. Finally, results seem to suggest that pedestrians behave differently or have different waiting times as they cross from one side of the street to the refuge and from the refuge to the other side of the street.” (Hamed, 2001).
Solution:
I think according to their advice for the 7-line project, it is pretty helpful to solve this project’s issues. It really can help people solve their problems and also make the city roads have high value to use. However, I think they should consider time things, they could limit some cars, like trucks because they are big if we can limit their time, it could have some improvements on the condition of our roads. It also could improve a city’s overall condition, “. The findings of a multiyear study of the livability literature, theory, and practice are followed by an extensive quantitative and qualitative study of more than 350 transit corridors including thousands of stations throughout the United States. Although often dismissed as subjective, this research shows that livability can be understood in well-defined and measurable ways, which are validated through an innovative geospatial approach using detailed national data on travel, health, safety, and other quality-of-life outcomes. The findings in this paper show how more integrated and livable transit corridors can yield multiple benefits regarding travel, health, welfare, and sustainability. The findings show how livability goals and their measures can inform planning decisions to promote equitable access to opportunities locally and regionally and yield multiple benefits. ” (Appleyard et al, 2017).
I think to re-design the pedestrian crossing the street is the correct plan because they need to consider how to solve this issue to make pedestrian safety and also to increase the driver driving on their street to safety. Reduce the pedestrian maybe is the best choose or building a small budge to give the pedestrian to cross the street to protect their safety and let drivers fast through the street not consider these pedestrians things, “Lack of adherence to traffic regulations at pedestrian crossings particularly by drivers create a paradigm in which pedestrians may become bold and force approaching vehicles in the traffic stream to brake in order to gain priority at the pedestrian crossing. On the other hand, pedestrian crossings with heavy pedestrian flow is likely to cause unacceptable vehicular delay (increased driver’s frustration).” (Hamed, 2001).
Reference
Appleyard, B., Ferrell, C. E., & Taecker, M. (2017). Transit corridor livability: Realizing the potential of transportation and land use integration. Transportation research record, 2671(1), 20-30.
Hamed, M. M. (2001). Analysis of pedestrians’ behavior at pedestrian crossings. Safety science, 38(1), 63-82.
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