Citation

Ferenchak NN, Marshall WE. Transp. Res. A Policy Pract. 2019; 124: 128-144.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.tra.2019.03.010

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Traditional pedestrian and bicyclist safety analyses typically examine crashes, injuries, or fatalities. However, this reactive approach only accounts for the places where people are currently walking or biking and those that are doing so. Would a proactive approach - examining areas where pedestrian and bicyclist activity is being suppressed because of safety concerns - illuminate other previously neglected safety issues? The goal of this work is to compare results from reactive and proactive pedestrian and bicyclist safety analyses. To accomplish this, we focus on child pedestrians and bicyclists in Denver, Colorado because of the structured characteristics of their travel behavior regarding trips to school. We complete a reactive crash cluster analysis and a proactive safety analysis that is based on trip suppression due to traffic safety concerns. A parental perception survey informs the mode choice model we create for the proactive safety analysis.

FINDINGS suggest that reactive approaches identify downtown Denver and major corridors as unsafe, while the proactive analysis also identifies neighborhoods in west, east, and northeast Denver. Due to an absence of crashes, the majority of these areas would not normally be considered unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists based on conventional reactive approaches. The fact that they are perceived as unsafe may be limiting usage and thereby limiting the number of crashes. In order to improve safety where children are currently walking and bicycling - as well as where they want to walk or bike - traditional analyses would benefit from augmentation by such a proactive safety approach.

Keywords: SR2S

Language: en

Keywords

Bicyclist; Child; Pedestrian; Proactive; Traffic safety; Trip suppression