Bicycle Highway on N Williams - 17 vehicles (bikes) in queue

I recall when the City started some analysis of the N Williams corridor, I was unclear why we would make such an effort to make a change on the corridor. These photos were from a Monday in May that was a nice day for a bicycle commute for most of these people.
The first photo shows the queue, the second photo takes a second look at the people in an attempt to capture that there was indeed that many people as the signal turned green. It should be noted that I moved ahead of the first three people, so the second photos shows just 13 people (I was the 17th in queue).
   
 As we progressed down the street, I felt uncomfortable in the bike lane and the number of cars on the street clearly were outnumbered but took much more space then my fellow cyclists.

These pictures were taken at 5:41 PM. Granted it was a bright sunny day, so that has a significant positive impact on number of people on bikes, you can see from the third photos that as we moved down the corridor the adjacent vehicle lane was not full and there was plenty of vehicular capacity to serve the demand on this particular cycle. The current design of the N Williams project offers an opportunity to create a safer environment on the corridor. The City has already done some modifications to the traffic signals to improve northbound flow, I am sure the additional space will be a welcome addition to the corridor and for increasing the safety of Portland's streets.

Week in Review - Mid-March 2013

I took a few pictures throughout the week that I thought were worth sharing. These are random collections of various things that catch my attention and obviously are different projects that are going on or that cross my desk.   

The latest cover of the ITE Journal had Rock Miller's influence

Pavement marking for the Ronde PDX Ride

A pedestrian signal head adjacent to the Sellwood Bridge was knocked off alignment, so I emailed staff at Maintenance

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Half Signals & HAWKs or Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons

At the meeting with the Texas Transportation Institute and the Federal Highway Administration and I learned today that the difference between Half Signals and Pedestrian Hybrid beacons is not statistically significant. I came across this chart that I found with a quick google search.

Slide from a presentation from the Baltimore Metropolitan Council
Exact source: unknown

This is a little bit different than the NCHRP 3-71 study that was published in the document as NCHRP 562.

Transportation Performance Measures

I posted this to the ITE Listserv this morning:

The Portland Metropolitan area has been working on creating arterial performance measures by using data from our traffic signals and other sources (Bluetooth, transit AVL, etc) to monitor the transportation system performance. We're interested in learning from others on their experiences of producing arterial performance measures.

Transit AVL data
Bluetooth data
All Data from an Arterial (Data Capture from a variety of sources on a corridor) 

We have also used a limited amount of adaptive control and are familiar with the performance measures of some of those systems. 
 
1. What are the best ways to integrate these data sources? 
2. What is the tradeoff between the number of MAC and other roadside readers and performance measure 
accuracy? 
3. How can bus transit and traffic signal data be integrated to improve arterial performance measures?

I am hoping to hear from practitioners that have implemented systems and how they have used their traffic signal system to produce some of these measures. This might also help us in preparing our Summer meeting workshop for the Transportation Research Board Committee on Traffic Signal Systems which is coming to Portland in July. 

Historic Traffic Signal from So. Cal

      I tweeted this photo as an example of the bias the traffic industry has had. Interesting that the "Auto Club of South California" has their name on this sign that is part of the traffic signal.   The traffic signal dates from some of the earliest on record (likely in the 1920s) and the LADOT website has a nice summary of some of the work that was done in L.A. along with some of their innovations, including the first pedestrian actuated signal (which increased delay for pedestrians).

Historic Waterhouse Traffic Signal

This traffic signal was found in the Texas Transportation Institute's lobby and is a Waterhouse Traffic Signal that was in the City of Los Angeles in the 1930s.

The traffic signal has the Go indication that rotates in and out.

The industry has quite a lot of discussion about clearance intervals these days and the historic traffic signals are a great opportunities to look at what has worked. This indication did not have a yellow and show red directly from green. Thus, you're supposed to stop as soon as it changes and leave it to the next movement to determine when it is safe to enter the intersection.      

Rapid Flash Beacon Laboratory Study

    At the Texas Transportation Institute office buildings, they have a great setup for measuring the brightness of the devices or legibility of a sign and its font. The researchers here gave us some great insights into the work they are doing. With some very simple demonstrations, they showed us how we fail to evaluate things scientifically in many cases and their effects on the distance where the beacon is at its greatest intensity.
The example from this day was the importance of angle for the rapid flashing beacon on the percieved intensity. In the example, they modified the angle where the beacons were pointed by 5 degrees and it was pretty suprising what the differences were. It was also surprising how different vertical angles were and again, it made me wonder what guidance we are providing to our electrical staff to insure that the settings are within reason. It's another good example where the intent of the traffic control device needs to be confirmed by being OUT standing in the field.
The second example was the intensity of the rapid flashing beacon and measuring the intensity of the unit by measuring with an oscilliscope and understanding how the pattern of the device is affecting the perspective. It is also something that we needed to use to understand what the effect was on the people who may have epileptic episodes. One of the important issues that remain was to determine what the effect of multiple beacons was on the percieved flashing pattern. If you have three different beacons, how will that be percieved by those that are approaching the beacon? Is an overhead beacon needed? If so, is it rectangular or a circular device?
There are endless questions for this particular study and our intent was to narrow the focus of the effort to those elements that would be most valuable to the profession. I tried to emphasize the practical nature of the research problem statement. Obviously, there are neat things you can do with tools like the ones shown, but if we're not solving an existing problems, are we making the best use of the resources available? That is one of the areas where the Texas Transportation Institute research team seems to excel is that they are listening closely to the practitioners. Hopefully, they will see through the bias of each individual and make decisions that move multimodal transportation solutions forward that seek to balance the priorities of the community. Uniform traffic control devices are a noble goal, but local needs must be considered as well and the recognition that different communities will have priorities that yield differnet answers.