Bicycle Signals Discussion at the NCUTCD Meeting

At the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices Committee Joint Signals/Bicycles meeting last night we made progress on the provision of bicycle signals in the Manual. The FHWA staff started off with a discussion of the direction they have been given by Ray LaHood, who implements policy through the FHWA Administrator Victor Mendez. The report we got from the staff was that  that "75%" of the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide would be implemented in the next Manual. The FHWA contact seemed to suggest that it would happen even if the National Committee did not support the changes which seems to be a big change to what the National Committee is used to.

Pedestrian hybrid beacon and bicycle signal farside

One of the elements that FHWA staff and the Signals folks raised at the end of the dialogue was the problems as they saw them with the combination of stop signs and the pedestrian hybrid beacon side street display. They believe that the combination of a stop sign and a bicycle traffic signal is in direct conflict and therefore should be strictly prohibited in the MUTCD (shall statement). I highlighted that we have not had an operational problem with this configuration at our two locations and we're planning to build two more (SE 19th & Tacoma and E 53rd & Burnside). This is similar to the complaint with the Half Signals. In the streamlining effort of the Manual, it was pointed out that Half Signals are no longer strictly prohibited. The intent is that the Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon would specifically prohibit bicycle signals being part of the installation. There was also specific feedback that Portland received with how the display was using flashing red and not to use the wig wag operation (wig wag is reserved for railroad signals in all other cases).

There was also the argument that beacons should not be at intersections. The fundamental research on the topic was focused in Tucson where they have deployed more than 80 beacons and they are mostly at intersections. There has been some conversation about eliminating that should not statement based on feedback from Tucson and other communities.

Portland Signals staff had concerns related to the pedestrian countdown timer and the safety of a person (running or cycling) arriving during the flashing don't walk countdown. There are some that are not interested in the argument as engineers often think of these crossing events as singular in nature (limited walking and cycling occurs in their communities?), so the late arriving person should just wait for the next opportunity and not cross on the Flashing Don't Walk.

The other element for bicycle signals that FHWA wanted the National Committee and the Task Force to consider was the inclusion of warrants. The warrants used in the California MUTCD are captured below. The entire CA MUTCD can be found here.

The one problem I see with the warrants (this is likely why there isn't a proliferation of bicycle signals in CA) is the need for >50 bicycles at a particular location. If there's no crossing opportunity now, it will be likely to not have 50 crossings. If the anticipation or projection of bicycle volumes is allowed than this isn't as significant of a barrier.

I confirmed with FHWA staff that the City of Portland's implementation of a bicycle signal at a pedestrian hybrid beacon is still under experimental review, if this prohibition comes to pass, the City would be notified.

How far is too far to walk to a traffic signal or beacon?

I was considering the question I fielded at the Livable Streets Talk last night and came across this excerpt from the NCHRP 562 report that is worth citing in the future.


Distance to Nearest Traffic Signal. The current(pre-2006) MUTCD includes a provision that a signal shall not be considered at locations within 300 ft (91 m) of another signal. This is believed to be based on the distance a pedestrian will walk in order to cross the major street. The researchers did not identify data that support this distance or other distances of how far beyond the desired path a pedestrian would be willing to walk. The USDOT’s 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey did find that most pedestrian trips (73 percent) are 0.5 mi (0.8 km) or less.With most trips being about 2,600 ft (792 m), pedestrians might not be willing to increase their trip length by more than 10 percent in order to walk to a different crossing location. As part of the on-street pedestrian surveys documented in Appendix K, those interviewed were asked “if this crossing was not here, would you walk to the next intersection (point to intersection of interest)?”For three of the sites, only about 25 percent of the respondents would walk to a signalized intersection at 550, 950, or 1,000 ft (168, 290, or 305 m). For the site with a signalized intersection about 200 ft (61 m) from the crossing, about 50 percent of those interviewed would walk to that crossing. The remaining site where this question was appropriate did not follow similar findings. A much higher percentage indicated that they would be willing to walk to another crossing. Over 65 percent of the respondents indicated that they would walk 600 ft (183 m) to cross at a signalized crossing. The number of individuals willing to walk such a distance was influenced by the number of lanes at the site (six lanes), speed and volume of traffic (high), and existing treatment (marked crosswalk only). Several of the respondents selected “yes” to the question and then commented that they walk to the nearby crossing “most of the time” or “sometimes” depending on the weather or other factors.
A future research effort should consider the same question for people on bicycles. Presumably, the speed of a cyclists expands the distance somewhat, but behavior seems largely sensitive to perceived risk.

Pedestrian Treatments in Cambridge

The treatments in Cambridge seemed to be an effort that has been significant in the past several years. The first intersection I encountered was a pedestrian signal outside of the "T" station at Cambridge Center adjacent to the MIT Co-op bookstore. The pedestrian refuge was sufficient to allow people to wait. There was a push button on either side of the street, but most people weren't bothering to push the button because the traffic was fairly slow and the risk of crossing against the signal was limited.
The state las in Massachusettes appear to be yield to pedestrians, which was reinforced many times with supplementary signs in the road and like these that are more substantial pole mounted signs.
  I was reviewing the FHWA website on the topic of Safety at Unsignalized Intersections and the information is dated and could stand an update.  The work completed by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program NCHRP 562/Transit Cooperative Research Program serves to provide a more urban focus that is applicable for communities like Cambridge and Portland. 
As I walked through Cambridge I came across pedestrian scramble installations and the City uses leading pedestrian intervals (LPI) at most all of the traffic signals. The LPI is a very short duration (most I saw were 3 seconds) which is significant in a cycle length as short as 90 seconds. The City also timed the walk with the countdown, which I argue limits your ability to provide transit signal priority because of the lack of intelligence in the countdown pedestrian indications (they simply repeat the interval in the controller that is flashing don't walk from the previous cycle).

Lamenting a Pedestrian's Experience on a Crosswalk and Measuring Delay at Signals

One of the smartest men in the Transportation Business, Darcy Bullock from Purdue University is visiting Portland the first part of this week to share some thoughts on arterial performance measurement. Darcy is a distinguished colleague and research professor at Purdue University. I was reviewing some older documentation and came across this gem he shared in 2008.

 “ A downtown shopper needed a fourleaf clover, a voodoo charm, and a St. Christopher's medal to make it in one piece from one curbstone to the other. As far as I was concerned--a traffic engineer with Methodist leanings--I didn't think that the Almighty should be bothered with problems which we, ourselves, were capable of solving.”
-Henry A. Barnes, traffic commissioner in Denver, Baltimore, and New York City, as referenced in Barnes'
autobiography, The Man With the Red and Green Eyes (E. P. Dutton and Company, 1965)

Source: Darcy Bullock Presentation at the TRB Traffic Signal Systems Committee Meeting in 2009 on Pedestrians.

The Portland UGB Trail: A Concept for Building the Region's Bike Network

A regional trail outside of Delft features excellent wayfinding.

I have often said that there is a lot that we can learn from the Dutch. The fact that they have 35% of their trips made by the bicycle is by design, not an accident. I spent the last summer learning with the PSU students about this when we explored the seven communities throughout the 2-week program. There was a lot about land use planning and facility construction that were part of our daily field trips that I am sure I never captured via my blog. This foundation of knowledge is serving me well as I think about the future of the Portland region's trail network.

On a bike ride this afternoon, I found the Gresham-Fairview Trail. I have passed the spot on the Springwater several times, but never explored the link it makes north to Fairview. I recall biking on the Springwater a year or so ago and someone from the City was doing a study of the corridor and a survey of the potential users. Apparently, the trail was opened last year with Blumenauer cutting the ribbon. At the time, when I rode past the surveyor they hadn't yet finished the bridge that would connect the Springwater to the new portions of the trail (the following link has a summary of the project in a text box next to a larger story about Gresham and wayfinding signs). The survey was mostly about use of the Springwater and origin-destinations of users of the Trail. I wasn't aware of the context the time. I must have missed the BikePortland coverage that can be found here.

The trail is a wonderful connection in East Portland. It connects several neighborhoods and is a major spine for the off-street network. The trail may be underused (compared to the Springwater), and it is something that seems easy to overlook because it is managed by the City of Gresham. This is something that Metro's Intertwine could help with, but I digress. It is in a great spot parallel to the I-205 path. The trail doesn't seem to have a good north end connection yet. That will come in Sections D & E as described in the Trail Master Plan.  It may sound like a complaint but often our projects only go so far and there's no common way to designate the end of a trail or a transition from the higher order facility to a shared experience. I found a Ride Report from the Tandem club that similarly critiqued the signage at the  northern end of the trail (I wasn't clear I was at the end) and the crossing of the light rail tracks (I actually got off the trail due to a missed sign) .

So the operative question is how do we build more of these sorts of facilities. It looked like they cobbled together federal, state, and City sources over ten years to get this done. The good news is Metro is active in this and have great staff working on the effort. There are a lot of good projects that have been completed, and the 40-mile loop is one of my favorites.

There's a host of complaints one could make about this. The most important one is why does it take so long? The easy answer, and this is largely speculation, is that we don't own the land, money is scarce (we've spent the bond money on larger natural areas as opposed to trails), an no one is jumping to give us that land like in the Lake Oswego Streetcar case. For this reason, I would focus some of the efforts on communities that are not yet built up.

Outside Portland's Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), the land is undeveloped because our forefathers had the vision to use land use laws to limit sprawl and restrict their use. The concept, inspired by my bike ride, is this:

For lands outside the UGB, or on the boundary itself, the local jurisdiction and Metro should team up to buy right of way to create/preserve a trail facility that would further build the regional network. The land would either be donated by the property owners and valued at the urban price point (assuming it is exempted and brought into the UGB) or Metro could use its Regional Trails resources to purchase the land at 10% above rural prices to provide the landowner some relief to the costs associated with the land use laws.

What about essential nexus?
There is the Dolan vs. The City of Tigard case that put limits on what the public agency could require from a citizen or development, but it seems like this would eliminate that because the compensation would be part of my concept.

Regional trails can serve as linear parks.
The rural equivalent of Portland's Sunday Parkways!

In the Netherlands, there are a lot of great examples of this sort of trail development in the rural environment. I found in talking to folks that some of these are used for longer commutes. They are not all trails and some of them are cyclepaths or one way roads that allow for some passing by vehicles. These facilities stretch throughout the country and there are excellent maps to show you where you are and the direction you're headed.

The system was a little disorienting at first, but if you had a smart phone and a GPS the system would give you instant access outside of the urban area that we would get if we did something similar to my concept above.

Pedestrian Scramble Debate in Canada

I picked this up off the ITE E-Newsletter Vancouver Sees Future in 'Scramble' Intersections, Toronto Sees Congestion
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/20/vancouver-sees-future-in-scramble-intersections-toronto-sees-congestion/
 Reassessing the Pedestrian Scramble
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/09/09/chris-selley-reassessing-the-pedestrian-scramble/
News Articles: National Post
Two news articles describe ongoing efforts to institute "pedestrian scramble" intersections (often known as Barnes Dances) in Canada and the US at the same time existing "pedestrian scramble" applications are being removed. The effects on pedestrian-vehicle conflicts and on pedestrian and vehicle throughput are presented.

Transportation Safety Map - Fatalities 2001-2009

2012 Transportation Research Board Meeting Schedule

This year's Transportation Research Board meeting promises to be as busy as ever. I have gotten myself involved in five separate activities over the Conference and continue to serve on two separate Committees. This blog post is a bit of a record keeping one, so I apologize if you've happened upon this and are reading it. If you are planning to be at TRB this year, come visit me at one of these sessions.

Building Modern Urban Bikeways: National Association of City Transportation Officials' Guide and National Experience
Event Date:	Jan 22 2012 9:00AM- 4:30PM

A nice intro to the Urban Bikeway Design Guide was featured in the American Society of Landscape Architects Blog "The Dirt"

Overview of National Association of City Transportation Officials' Urban Bikeway Design Guide (P12-6095) 
     Maddox, Heath - San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency 
     Sebastian, Jim - District of Columbia Department of Transportation 
     Koonce, Peter J .V. - City of Portland, Oregon 


 Implementation and Case Studies of Innovative Bicycle Facilities (P12-6099) 
     Dill, Jennifer - Portland State University 
     Koonce, Peter J .V. - City of Portland, Oregon 
     Maddox, Heath - San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency 
     Sebastian, Jim - District of Columbia Department of Transportation 
     Freedman, Nicole - Boston Transportation Department 
     Seiderman, Cara - City of Cambridge, Massachusetts 


There's two presentations in one workshop on the NACTO Bikeway Design Guide. Those presentations will have some elements from this previous presentation I gave at Portland State's Friday Seminar in March. 


Then there are the three papers that I helped edit and contributed towards and these included the following:


  Barrier-Free Ring Structures and Pedestrian Overlaps in Signalized Intersection Control (12-2141) - C13 
     Furth, Peter G. - Northeastern University 
     Muller, Theo H.J. - Delft University of Technology, Netherlands 
     Salomons, Maria - Delft University of Technology, Netherlands 
     Bertulis, Tomas - Northeastern University 
     Koonce, Peter J .V. - City of Portland, Oregon 


Preliminary Development of Methods to Automatically Gather Bicycle Counts and Pedestrian Delay at Signalized Intersections (12-2107) 
     Kothuri, Sirisha Murthy - Portland State University 
     Reynolds, Titus - City of Portland, Oregon 
     Monsere, Christopher M. - Portland State University 
     Koonce, Peter J .V. - City of Portland, Oregon 

A Framework for Multimodal Arterial Data Archiving (12-1750) 
     Monsere, Christopher M. - Portland State University 
     Olson, Carl - Portland State University 
     Kothuri, Sirisha Murthy - Portland State University 
     Tufte, Kristin A. - Portland State University 
     Koonce, Peter J .V. - City of Portland, Oregon 


I remain active on the Traffic Signal Systems Committee and Bus Transit Systems, so I will be at those meetings as well. 

Traffic Signals and Their Role in Congestion and Placemaking

Great couple of posts on Traffic Signals, yet the perspecptives on signal timing are about more than 10 years old from the Portland viewpoint. We've had transit priority since 1999 and the signals never leave coordination. LRT preemption isn't terribly novel and the staff in Portland are continuing to work with our software vendors on ways to make it more effective.

The article that inspired this are here:
Fighting Congestion in Minneapolis on a Tight Budget
It's not about fighting congestion, it's about taking a look at the policy and determining the best solution given the desired outcomes. Do you want people to take bus, should transit be a competitive mode, if so, manage congestion, don't fight it is a philosophy that has been employed in Portland.

Can Traffic Signals Ease Congestion Without Discouraging Walking?

Yes, Downtown Portland is the perfect example of this, we progress traffic in one direction on our one way street grid and pedestrians in the opposite direction. Does everyone know this? No, but at least we're trying to make it so that half of the time when you're walking downtown you're delayed less than you would be otherwise. We also limit delays to pedestrians by keeping the cycle lengths low, which with short blocks (260' in downtown) is important to reduce the amount of gridlock (traffic queues spilling back between intersections) that occurs during the peak traffic hours. Portland doesn't accomplish this during the typical weekday, but that is life in the big city.

Meaning of the Flashing Don't Walk at Traffic Signals - Pedestrian Countdown Timer Model Ordinance from Salt Lake City

What does it mean? It's all French to me. 

At the Workshop on Pedestrian Safety at Midblock Crossings I learned about the following ordinance of Salt Lake City, which was an idea I had that I think represents a better representation of what the Flashing Don't Walk means with the Countdown timers. 

Here's the complete section from their Code.

SECTION 20.  That Section 12.32.050, Salt Lake City Code, pertaining to pedestrian “walk” and “don’t walk” signals be, and the same hereby is, repealed.

            SECTION 21.  That Section 12.32.055, pertaining to pedestrian signal indications, be, and is hereby enacted to read as follows:

12.32.055 Pedestrian Signal Indications.

Whenever a pedestrian signal is in place and operating, the illuminated words or symbols shall indicate and govern pedestrians as follows:

A.            A steady white WALK or WALKING PERSON (symbolizing WALK) signal indication means that, exercising due caution, a pedestrian facing the signal indication may start to cross the roadway in the direction of the signal indication.

B.            A flashing orange DONT WALK or UPRAISED HAND (symbolizing DONT WALK) signal indication means that a pedestrian shall not start to cross the roadway in the direction of the signal indication, but that any pedestrian who has already started to cross on a steady white WALK or WALKING PERSON (symbolizing WALK) signal indication may complete crossing the roadway.

C.            A steady orange DONT WALK or UPRAISED HAND (symbolizing DONT WALK) signal indication means that a pedestrian shall not enter the roadway in the direction of the signal indication.

                D.  A COUNTDOWN CLOCK (displaying time in seconds remaining in the pedestrian crossing phase) in conjunction with the flashing orange UPRAISED HAND means that a pedestrian facing the signal indication may start to cross the roadway in the direction of the signal indication, but only if such pedestrian is able to safely walk completely across the street or to a safety island before the COUNTDOWN CLOCK shows no remaining time.

Pedestrian Scramble aka Barnes Dance

The posting of transportation videos on YouTube is something that will make future engineers more innovative. Here's a great summary from DDOT and Wasim Raja, a colleague that I worked with (when he was with Arlington County, VA) in my previous endeavors.


This reminded me of the scramble I saw in Tokyo at the Shibuya District.

Transportation Research Board Paper Acceptance

Sirisha Kothuri, one of the City of Portland's interns over the summer wrote up a paper describing our work to use existing signal controllers to measure delay at traffic signalized intersections. While we were at it we figured out we could collect bicycle counts as well at select locations. Well, I am proud to announce that the paper: "Preliminary Development of Methods to Automatically Gather Bicycle Counts and Pedestrian Delay at Signalized Intersections" was accepted for the 2012 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. The authors include Sirisha Kothuri, Titus Reyonlds, Christopher Monsere, and Peter Koonce.

I am sure it will be posted at some point and I will update the post when I find it.

Walk21 Davie Street Walkshop

Gordon Price hosted the Walkshop on Davie Street that took us to the West End, the neighborhood that he lives in. We started at the Seawall, which is a very important backbone to the City's transportation infrastructure. It was great to hear Gordon talk about the history of the community and the challenges he had in getting developers to do the right thing. He has a lot of experience related to the use of the streets, the choices that were made at the local level, and the big picture, which he shared at the plenary session.

The seawall has a lot of use throughout the day and is a place where people go to get a break from the City. Gordon described how the City pulled together a lot of vacant land and worked with a developer on the master plan for this area. The developer chosen was not a Canadian or American (an Asian country I can't recall), which describes the density (most American developers probably wouldn't have had the same vision) and the layout which reminds me of something similar that I have seen in Japan, which I would describe as more complex.

As we walked up Davie Street, we found that the mix of developments was more diverse. There was a nice section of old warehouses that had been converted into live-work space. This area reminded me of the Pearl District and specifically on NW 13th Avenue in Portland. Both areas have links to transit (streetcar vs. subway). The planner from the City of Vancouver described that the docks are managed by the City, so they control the space and manage the cafes quite carefully to get the desired outcome of a livable space that attracts conventioners and people that are looking for a unique setting. The docks are wider than ours and thus they have an opportunity to do quite a bit more with the space than we have in Portland.

The outdoor seating was heated and sheltered from the wind. I thought the heating was unnecessary but definitely would have been appreciated by my wife.

There were quite a few big flat screens for watching TV and it brought the restaurant experience into the public realm.

They had sort of an odd take on garbage dumpsters and left them out in the open to maintain the district's gritty feel. This surprised me because as the owner of the public space they could have come up with a more creative solution (the Dutch co-locate them underground) to eliminate the use of space on the street.
As we walked north through the City, I was definitely the only one of the bunch taking photos of the traffic signals and the lighting, which is so similar but different in subtle ways.

Walk 21 Conference Venue : Everything is Going to be Alright

The folks at Walk21 have it figured out. When you have a conference pick a good venue. The conference reception was held at an Art Gallery well positioned to get people networking and finding ways to exchange ideas. There was a great number of folks mingling and talking about a wide variety of topics at the meeting.
I had a good opportunity to discuss some of my ideas for what makes a Walk Friendly Community with Carl Sundstrom, who is involved with writing up the standards for the rating system. Clearly, there are some elements of signal timing and engineering details that should be a part of any rating system and it is up to progressive communties to find ways to share their best practices with others.

Earlier in the day on the Walkshop around Vancouver BC, I had the good fortune to talk with Gordon Price, who was one of the Plenary speakers from the early set. It was great talking with him and I knew him from his earlier speaking engagements in Portland. We discussed the downtown pedestrian environment (he commented how he thought one way streets actually worked quite well in Portland) and I shared with him that we were progessing traffic at speeds of 12 to 16 miles per hour (he thought it was 22 miles per hour - maybe the metric conversion playing tricks on him). He said Portland was his second favorite City, which I am unsure if he was being honest about, but he seemed like he was quite sincere. I described the concept of quarter cycle offsets which is actually quite hard to explain as an elevator speech, it's something I should work on because it is a powerful outcome and a good reason to favor one ways streets in a downtown setting.

Walk 21 Transforming the Automobile City

I am in Vancouver BC this morning attending the Walk 21 Conference and this is the insert in the Globe & Mail newspaper.
The consciousness around walking and car culture are very interesting and it seems that more people in Canada are aware of the urban conditions. I think this is primarily due to the fact that many of the large unviersities are in the urban context.

The program schedule started off with a fantastic array of speakers including the conference organizers and the City's Director of Streets, Neal Carley.

One of the speakers on the docket was Gordon Price, who was an elected leader in Vancouver who talked about Motordom and the Wars Between Pedestrians and Cars between 1920s and 1940s. He offered some wonderful context related to the growth of streetcars and the rise of the automobile.

He cited Vancouver's example of Construction of Streetcar by decade which was a steep incline to death in the 1930s when automobiles took over.
1889 to 1899 16.1 miles,
1900 to 1909 37.2,
1910 to 1919 50.2,
1920 to 1929 10.3

He highlighted the three elements needed in Vancouver and other communities as:

• Sufficient density – single family homes and higher
• Good mix of uses
• Walkable distance (3 blocks to transit maximum)

Gordon Price highlighted the term "Motordom" in the book Fighting Traffic – The dawn of the motor age in the American City. He defined Motordom as an alliance of engineers, etc that “Socially reconstructed the purpose of the street”.

Detroit 1917 Campus Martius picture showing amazing mix of uses

A good example of this was the term "Jaywalker", where a Jay is a hick – a person that doesn’t know the rules of the City. Pedestrians "need" to stay in between the lines. So, in 1920s there was a war on the car because new drivers had problems with safety, but in the 1930s the car had won and we have been accomodating the car for the past eight years. Streets are places for movement of vehicles.

He highlighted that "the car is fabulous, we love it. It’s a freedom machine." Moving forward we have to figure out how we change the guidelines in the Transportation Planning Handbook by the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

He went on to discuss how ITE principles resulted in efficient, free, and rapid car traffic. What could be wrong with that? It’s universal. We have been focused on Auto-Dependent Urban Planning. The car isn’t going away, nor should it. It does things that the car can only do. BUT when you Design for Car, you get three things:

• Big and Simple,
• Flat, and
• Uniform (limited chances for making a great place).

Once you design the roads, then you have to get parking. Motordom drove out all of the other choices.

It was an insightful presentation highly relevant to the audience.

Pedestrian Countdown Timers and End of Green

An example where the pedestrian
countdown doesn't agree with the
vehicle signal indication.

I had a request inquiring about why the pedestrian countdown timer can't be used to give information to bus drivers, people riding their bikes, or people in their cars. I have had to give the response a few times, so I figured it was worth posting so I can refer back to it later.  

The pedestrian countdown timers are the new standard for indication of the amount of time that people crossing the street have to clear the intersection. There are many cases when the pedestrian logic in the traffic signal controller does not match the green time for the vehicles (people on cars and bicycles or transit vehicles) and for this reason we can not always end the green at the same time as the end of the countdown timer for the pedestrian indication (the time that we must make the decision to go from Walk to Flashing Don't Walk is obviously earlier than the time we decide to go to yellow).  

I use the countdown timer as an indication of how much time is left in the green at the intersection when I am on the street. That being said, it has to be used in context and I don't recommend that practice, especially if you're approaching an intersection at a high rate of speed. In that case, you should pay attention to the vehicle indications (green, yellow, and red) as this presents the information that is presented for you as a vehicle to obey. 

Delays at Traffic Signanls

Great post by a blog that I haven't read for awhile, but came across it while I was searching for a few things.
Click the title for a perspective about how badly traffic signal engineers treat pedestrians and cyclists.

Transportation in Copenhagen



The blue marking denotes a conflict area for oncoming
traffic that is accepting a gap in vehicle and bicycle traffic.

There's clearly a commitment to human scale transportation in Copenhagen. There are several tradeoffs between vehicle travel and bike ped facilties shown in these pictures.

The striping of the blue bicycle lane and the crosswalk ladder striping show a commitment to maintenance that we don't make in the U.S. We have used green selectively to identify conflicts at intersections and while an oncoming permitted left turn across this blue is present at this intersection, we wouldn't use green striping here if we had a similar intersection in Portland. There's also not the expense of mast arm signal poles at these locations. They use predominantly post mounted signals at the intersections that require motorists to search for the indication in their field of vision. It is done at the risk of safety (our mindset in the U.S.) which in our practice places the traffic signal heads over each lane of traffic prominently displayed so as not to put any doubt as to who has the right of way. Does doubt and uncertainly result in lower speeds and ultimately a safer multimodal environment?



The signals at this particular location were manufactured by Swarco,
an Austrian firm that we are trying to procure bicycle signals from.



Review of Manual: the Movie

I starred in a Filmed By Bike video this year. I wasn't completely sure what the interview was going to be for and whether I would be one of several people involved, but it turned out they (Joe Biel and Steve Bozzone) made a movie that highlighted my summary of the challenges we have with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

Delay at Traffic Signals

A nice write up on the different philosophies of traffic signal timing in the various communities in the U.S. and the Netherlands.

Here's another blog, focused on pedestrian liberation. This sort of data is helpful in making the case for changes in the signal system that affect all traffic.