Bikes & Cars in Bejing China

 

The signage in China uses some unique elements that in the U.S. are a bit uncommon. The lane signage shows the separation of bikes and vehicle lanes (represented by the fence) with a solid line on the sign. The bike sign on the over head mast arm is supported by the post mounted sign which is at the fence. This particular street was a frontage road adjacent to the freeway in Beijing. The signal heads are over to the right which is not compliant with the MUTCD and I would be curious whether there is any significance to the location of the post mounted bicycle signal head and the two that are on the arm other than the need to provide some redundancy in case one of the red indications is out. 

A few other observations is that there does not seem to be confusion between the bicycle signal display and the vehicular signal heads, as is sometimes described in the U.S. that could be that they used to have more bicycle traffic then they appear to have today, so most people are aware of what the bicycle indication is in reference to the other movements at the intersection.

E-Bikes for Freight in the Forbidden City Beijing China

E-bikes were everywhere in China. I was surprised to come across this one in the Forbidden City delivering inside one of the markets that was part of the cultural site.

This was only half the load that was carried in

             

Electronic bikes were very widely used in China.

Flying Piegon Bikes in Beijing along the Hutong

     

I came across these Flying Piegons and thought of the old saying a "Piegons in every home" that seems like an antiquated concept in today's China. Yesterday's Piegons has been replaced with Buicks and Chinese model cars that are being produced at a record pace.

Pedestrian Countdown Signal Crossing in Beijing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adaptive Control vs. Time of Day Signal Timing Plans

Interesting article that is worthy of a blog post by itself: http://www.westernite.org/awards/bestpaper/2013-Weir-Shykowski.pdf

There is some debate over the benefits of Adaptive Control on the ITE listserv, here's my response:
Adaptive control is something that I thought was an effective strategy for dealing with changing traffic conditions. As a practitioner that has experience with the SCATS system, completed evaluation for the (now defunct?) OPAC initiative, and read the evaluations of the ACS Lite implementations completed by contractors (Sabra Wang) for the FHWA, it seems that they have their place, but the costs of the software and the modified detection are a lot for an agency to bear. There is also the cost of learning the software and having the maintenance and engineering staff know how to operate two different systems. As an agency with 1,080 signals, the City of Portland has 13 that are adaptive. The additional benefit of the 1%, that the City spent a significant amount of money to "improve" may have been better spent selectively throughout the system on technology that would have put information in the hands of the engineers that operate the remaining 99% of the signals. One could argue, (I could make this argument myself), that the limitation of resources across the board should not be the key limiting factor that we use in the cases, and there are communities like Bellevue, WA and  Oakland County, MI (among others) that have installed enough of an adaptive system that their costs per intersection have come down significantly. My point is this, if an agency has a critical mass of intersections to apply an adaptive system than the engineers and maintenance staff have the ability to learn the system well enough to be effective in its operation. I will still contend there is a lot of functionality in our existing systems that we aren't using and effective gap setting, improved measurement of performance, and recognition and response of problems would serve us well. Here are my takeaways, I am curious if folks agree.

There are several situations where it is worth considering:
1. Surrounding event centers where the traffic ingress/egress are so variable that there isn't a great way to handle this (Portland uses some responsive control that works reasonably well at the NBA arena in Portland).
2. Applied where there is a significant number of intersections where the focus of several staff will handle the challenge of learning the new system.
3. If an agency is looking to mitigate congestion (as oppose to widening an existing street), adaptive control would likely increase capacity by being responsive to traffic increases in the shoulders of the peak by raising the cycle length earlier than a time of day plan. This is my opinion,  studying these effects has not been done carefully (the Portland system included).

Significant limitations of the systems that need to be considered:
1. Limited ability to prioritize transit within the systems. The first answer from our vendor related to transit priority in the adaptive system was non-responsive.
2. Oversaturated operations. Does the system work better when traffic is queued up between intersections? Have you engineered the adaptive system to recognize when congestion occurs?

Hong Kong NW Territory Cycling Infrastructure

I was expecting to see good cycling infrastructure while visiting China. I'd read a few stories highlighting how the status of the bicycle has fallen quite a bit in the past years and how cycling is not considered as a sport. Clearly, there is considerable status in having a car much as it is in the U.S. and on warm summer days in Hong Kong, I understand the usefulness of air conditioning. This post hopes to share the good and bad of Hong Kong cycling infrastructure.

One of the observed problems (which I will cover in more details later) is behavior of cyclists, but that's party a response to the lack of comfort they feel while using the facilities. It is partly due to conflicts from the other users of the streets, but also from the infrastructure provided. I liked the succinct comment I found with a quick search at http://www.whatsonningbo.com/health47.html:  "44 percent of people in Beijing use their cars to travel distances of less than 5 kilometres. Most of these journeys could be made on a bicycle. So creating an environment to enable this social change is vital. 
Duan Liren, a traffic consultant for Beijing municipal government, says first and foremost Chinese road users need to understand the concept of Right of Way on bicycle. "If a thief steals 100 yuan, you know it's illegal. Actually this is as wrong as a vehicle driving in a bicycle lane." 

2-way Cycletracks were provided on many of the streets we were on.
At intersections, they use bollards to slow traffic to insure yielding.

As much as right of way and behavior is important, quality infrastructure is critical for people that want to use the facilities that are built. This post is a summary of some cycletrack elements we saw in the Northwest Territory of Hong Kong. In general, the City seems heavily influenced by British traffic (driving) standards and much like I have seen in London, most of the cycling infrastructure was not present on many of the major streets. London is making major strides to change that by committing to a new plan just this past March.  It's not just London that is making bold steps, but cities like New York City among others in the U.S., yet similarly there there are occasional challenges to this new infrastructure.

A weekend mountain biker weaves through the cars that are parked near the bollards.

Bollards at the intersections made it impossible to cycle side by side
with another person continuously. 

During our tour from a local we got to see some of the urban infrastructure. The visit and cycling tour in the NW Territory was a good opportunity to experience the infrastructure from a local's perspective.    The tour guide gave us a troup of the area nearby his home and then out into the “Wetlands, New Towns & Heritage Trails”.

The bollards took varioius form. In order to keep cars out of the facility, signs were placed
at numerous locations even at some locations is might have been unnecessary. 

A private driveway introduced a curve which made this intersection difficult to traverse, especially for a younger rider that may not be as confident on their bike.  

     

Shenzhen Traffic Management Center Tour

The tour group included some of the speakers from the CICTP
Conference including representatives from Texas DOT, Texas
Transportation Institute, and University of Toronto.

    The human side of the TMC tour included Rob Bertini and I with Rob's host for the day.