TRB Papers submitted this year

I had the distinct pleasure in working with two people this year on papers for the upcoming 2014 TRB Annual Meeting where it was wonderful to read their work and support as I could with key thoughts and edits.

Effect of Reducing Maximum Cycle Length on Roadside Air Quality and Travel Times on a Corridor in Portland, OR:  Christine M. Kendrick, David Urowsky, Willie Rotich, Peter Koonce, & Linda George

Mitigating the RightTurn Conflict Using Protected Yet­ Concurrent Phasing for Cycletrack and Pedestrian Crossings

Peter G. Furth, Northeastern University, Peter J. Koonce, City of Portland, Miao Yu, Northeastern University Fei Peng, Northeastern University

First TRB Paper - 15 years ago

I am celebrating an anniversary of sorts that happened 15 years ago. In 1998, on this day, I was busy working on the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting paper deadline (August 1st every year as every graduate student in the U.S. can probably tell you) and produced the following paper:

 Koonce, P. J. V, T. Urbanik, and D. Bullock. Evaluation of Diamond Interchange Signal Controller Settings by Using Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation. In Transportation Research Record 1683. Transportation Research Board. Washington D.C., 1999, pp. 59-66.

It was a very auto oriented research document on traffic signal settings and I really had my heart into the research at the time. I was fascinated with the concept of exploring how traffic signals worked and how I was going to make lives better by reducing traffic congestion at diamond interchanges. There were no pedestrians let alone bicycles in College Station at the SMART Diamond interchange at Highway 6 and Harvey Road.


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Tonight, I am collaborating with researchers related to topics as diverse as air quality assessments of adaptive traffic signal control, thermal imaging detection cameras for bicycle traffic, and effects of traffic signal phasing for bicycle travel. A pretty diverse set of topics still with the common theme of traffic signals.

Vehicular Cycling Debate

I have been pulled into the Vehicular Cycling debate because I dared question the National Committee members on the topic through the NCUTCD listserv. Wading into that conversation is disconcerting.

The first round of dialogue centered on the "fact" that education was the answer. All we need to do is get more people educated about positioning their bicycle and we should have savvy cyclists. As an accomplished cyclist myself, I enjoy having a bike lane when there's an ability to provide one as opposed to sharing a lane with high speed traffic.

The second foray was worse:

I was basically told that my 7 year old should keep her bicycle on the playground and that Portland's safety hasn't gotten better, that we're just masking the data with fancy statistics.

The City Club's recent report "No Turning Back: A City Club Report on Bicycle Transportation in Portland " highlights the steps a group of prominent citizens believe we should take with cycling in the Best Bike City in America. It's interesting that the Vehicular cycling folks are in largely suburban areas where cycling is largely representative of less than a half percent of the population.

Pedaling Revolution has a nice Chapter on Overcoming the Safety Barriers to bicycle transportation that's worth sharing, so I have taken photos of the book from Jeff Mapes' book, which I highly recommend, Buy it here at Powells!

A summary of some of the Vehicular cycling concept arguments..

Part of the argument in Pedaling Revolution for protected lanes...

Are Traffic Signals Bad? The Bikeportland "debate"

A friend wrote in on Bikeportland.org about how traffic signals are bad.

Here's my response:

I respectfully disagree with you on the topic of traffic signals and support the dialogue on speed limits. There are 1,070 traffic signals in Portland and not all are designed for cars to "move faster". A good number of them (250) are in downtown and are used to manage traffic carefully to insure speeds are safe for all users (especially pedestrians crossing right turning traffic and people on bikes sharing the lane or in a bike lane). Our policies in downtown prioritize multimodal movement and safety and have for thirty years. We have been extending that concept to recent projects like the Burnside-Couch couplet which are set up to progress all traffic at 20 miles per hour. Granted, cars can move faster then that, but our intent is to manage the traffic so the traffic signals are a positive influence on the safety of the street. This is not a one sized fits all proposition. The adjacent buildings and activity of pedestrian and bicycle travel play a significant role. What works in downtown doesn't on 82nd Avenue.

Traffic signals aren't a panacea for safety either. In situations with two way traffic, we can't manage the speeds like we do in a grid of streets with nearby signals. There are a number of corridors where the signals are so distant that they do move cars faster than if they weren't there, but any intersection treatment would have the propensity to do that.

I can't stress enough that context is important, but there is also difficulty in changing the status quo with only a change to the traffic signals. There has to be the right context and other supportive efforts to make change happen. Just as the concepts of Missouri aren't likely to show up in Portland any time soon, the ideas of one intersection in England would have to be used with the right context and community support.

Your later comment on lower speed limits and the resulting dialogue should be considered further in a Vision Zero type effort. Reducing speed limits, combined with effective enforcement, including working with the judicial system, would only be effective with a comprehensive focus on the problem.  That's what leadership looks like.

If there are traffic signals that you think encourage speeding, ask City staff to take a look at them. If there are streets that seem to have speed limits that are set unreasonably high, call the 503-823-SAFE hotline. The City uses good feedback to make change happen, sometimes incrementally but it all adds up.

UPDATE: Jonathan was kind enough to suggest that this was how to use comments effectively by citing my response. It must have been a slow Bike News day!

Multiple Lane Transition with a Green Bike Box

Boston has done a bit with green paint that I thought were notable. Here's a series of photos of an application that you don't often see in the American context. I didn't have a lot of time to study the intersections. 

Here's a photo of a bike box across multiple lanes

the bike lane lead is provided to go from the right hand side to... 

the left hand side, you can see there's also a transition that can occur from the lane

the transition to the left hand side occurs for under the bridge so that you can continue on through the system avoiding a conflict.

     

Traffic Signal Systems Committee Meeting in Portland

At the Summer meeting of the Transportation Research Board Committee on Traffic Signal Systems, we started off the three day meeting on a bike ride of inner Portland, giving the transportation engineers the opportunity to experience the streets on a bicycle. The 20 or so people that joined the trip got to see some of the good, bad, and brand new of the City. The visit included a trip on our City's downtown grid (slow speed progression - good), connections to the Waterfront across SW Naito Parkway (signals not really built for bicycle traffic - bad), the Eastbank Esplanade (relatively new), the Hawthorne Bridge counter (new), and the South Waterfront signals on SW Moody (new and improved).

The sit down meetings on Sunday occurred after lunch with multiple tracks of topic including (Simulation & Asset Management), (Multimodal & Technology - think driverless cars), and Signal Timing. The final session is a Research summary that comes up with Problem Statements that will be forwarded to the AASHTO Standing Committee on Research (SCOR) which results in some ideas that end up getting funded that can improve our practice in traffic signal systems.

These sorts of visits to bicycle infrastructure exposes engineers to a new mode that aren't always considered in traditional traffic engineering. There have been some cases where engineers have gotten an opportunity to travel to Europe to see the design used for multimodal solutions that have lead to 30% bicycle mode split.

That's a huge difference than Portland and it is largely because of the gaps that exist based on the various designs that have been used over the years and the lack of emphasis on this mode in the U.S.


More thoughts as the meeting continues throughout the next two days.

Detecting Bicycles at Traffic Signals Sign

The City of Portland has been working with Portland State University students to determine whether the detection of bicycles at traffic signals can be best done with inductive loop detection or some other type. We have studied a variety of different detection types including video and microwave and thermal imaging and there are good applications for these different types depending on the infrastructure at your particular location.

The standard detection remains inductive loops and with that sort of equipment, it is important to get people on bikes in the right spot so the traffic signal infrastructure can work as designed.   My experience in Boston, MA showed a new way of marking and signing where a  person should locate themselves and their bike to get a green indication. I couldn't really determine what the sign meant. It's not intuitive to me and I wasn't sure where I was supposed to place my bicycle.   I am hopeful someone will be able to tell me via the blog comments, without seeing the loop cuts in the pavement (see the last picture), I didn't know what the wording of the sign meant for me to do.    

I would compare this sign to the following video on being detected using the standard sign and detector marking.