Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads—ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook (2015) / Chapter Skim
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5 The goals of Phase I are to define the purpose of the prioritization effort, determine how community/agency values should be expressed through factor selection and weighting, and select variables to represent the chosen factors, while taking into account data availability and technical resources. Step 1: Define Purpose At the outset of a prioritization exercise, it is important to identify a clear purpose.
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6 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook For example, one community/agency might choose to emphasize safety while another might prioritize demand over all other factors. Others may choose to incorporate multiple values in their prioritization process and weight factors in terms of their importance (see Step 3)
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 7 drain agency resources when implementing pedestrian or bicycle projects. Many constraints are framed in terms of cost, and may include right-of-way acquisition, facility design, mitigation and construction, available funding (internal and external)
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8 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook could include support for pedestrian or bicycle improvements from elected representatives in different parts of the community or leaders of different local agencies. Safety The Safety factor accounts for the risk of a pedestrian or bicyclist being involved in a traffic collision (or crash)
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 9 as new sidewalks and bicycle lanes, particularly when the new facility fills a gap between existing facilities. According to the literature review and agency survey conducted as part of the study that informed this guidebook (See the NCHRP Project 07-17 Final Report for details)
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10 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook Tip: Weighting The process of establishing weights leads agencies to think about which factors are really necessary for implementing the prioritization analysis. If a factor selected in Step 2 is given a particularly low weight relative to other factors in Step 3, that factor will have a correspondingly low impact on the final prioritization score.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 11 set of factors. That being said, the process should be transparent.
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12 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook many communities, the deployment of such tools should be supplemented by other outreach methods such as meetings, tabling, etc. that target populations that may not be reached using technological tools.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 13 Opportunities Opportunity variables (Table 4) are attributes of projects that increase their potential to be implemented.
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14 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook operationalized as Costs-Demand-Benefits Analysis Tool available from the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center. • The New Zealand Transport Agency Economic Evaluation Manual (2010)
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 15 pedestrian or bicycle crashes during a specific time period divided by a measure of exposure for that time period. Examples of exposure measures include: • The pedestrian crossing volume multiplied by the perpendicular motor vehicle volume at a crosswalk.
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16 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook to observe behaviors that nearly cause a crash. These "near misses" can help represent the Safety factor in cases where pedestrian and bicycle crash data is unavailable or limited.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 17 Table 6. Existing Conditions variables.
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18 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook Pedestrian Demand Pedestrian demand tends to be fairly localized and is largely driven by the distribution and density of land uses that attract pedestrians. Several regression models have been created to estimate pedestrian volumes at intersections based on proxy variables (Schneider et al.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 19 Regression models have been developed to estimate bicycle volumes at intersections (Griswold et al.
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20 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook walking, so the need for pedestrian facilities in neighborhoods with low-income households is higher. Table 9 provides a list of equity variables and their applications.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 21 agency/community and project type; however, this is usually not the case. Data availability may constrain the possible options for prioritization.
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22 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook Alternatively, in Step 8, when an agency must input data into its prioritization tool, it may acquire data from other sources, generate data using GIS or other tools, or collect new data using other methods. Other potential sources include data that may have been collected by an agency for a different purpose; data that resides in a different department within the same organization (e.g., location of park facilities)
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 23 to develop these cost estimates for every project. Therefore, in some cases, it may be useful to express constraints as an order of magnitude (e.g., low, moderate, high)
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24 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook Safety Data Pedestrian and bicycle crashes and injury severity are likely to be important variables under the Safety factor. Crash data typically consists of records of reported crashes.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 25 As discussed under Step 4 (Select Variables) , the Safety factor may also be expressed using the crash rate, which is dependent upon exposure measures, such as pedestrian and bicycle counts, motor vehicle counts, or combinations of variables in the Demand category.
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26 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook Example Existing Condition Variable Data Considerations/Sources Traffic speed Posted speed as surrogate for actual speeds, or 85th percentile speeds based on speed studies Traffic volume and composition (percentage of heavy vehicles) ADT or annual average daily traffic (AADT)
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 27 Existing Conditions datasets are commonly in digital format (spreadsheet or GIS) , but some agencies may have data available only in hard copy.
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28 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook estimated for an entire neighborhood or district. Examples of general roadway network measures include: • Percentage of households within X miles of a bikeway or walking route.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 29 • Commute data represent only the most common, longest-distance mode that people used to travel to work during the week before the survey. People who walked or bicycled to work one or two days during the previous week and people who walked or bicycled as a part of a longerdistance automobile or public transit commute are not counted among walking or bicycling trips.
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30 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook Obtaining Additional Data to Measure Demand If a local agency does not have population density, employment density, or land use data, the county or regional planning agency may have some or all of this data available and may be able to provide it in a format that is usable for the prioritization process. Guidance on methods and technologies for collecting pedestrian and bicycle count data has been developed (NCHRP 07-19; NCHRP Report 797)
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 31 Equity Data Table 20 shows example data considerations and/or sources for Equity variables. Some types of Equity data, such as neighborhood automobile ownership overlap with pedestrian or bicycle demand proxy data.
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32 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook Obtaining Additional Data to Measure Compliance If existing data are not available, or are only partially complete in terms of geographic scope or needed data fields, some information may be obtained using aerial imagery that is widely available for free through online applications. For example, the presence of curb ramps at intersections, or sidewalks along a given corridor may be obtained by panning through the corridor using streetlevel imagery.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 33 Prioritization Process Characteristics Advantages of Technological Platforms Process considers a large number of projects or locations and/or project considers many variables. Electronic spreadsheet and GIS technologies are often more efficient than manual processes for handling large amounts of data.
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34 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook • Using a spreadsheet allows users to perform calculations and functions that may not be readily transparent to a public audience. • On its own, a spreadsheet may not communicate top priorities as quickly and clearly as a map.
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 35 side-by-side can help illustrate why those two variables lead to top-priority sidewalk retrofit projects near high concentrations of employment. GIS also has several disadvantages: • GIS software is required and can be expensive, both in terms of the cost of the software and the cost of a GIS specialist who has the skills to use the software.
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36 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook United States to allow users to measure the width of streets, sidewalks, lanes, and other features to the nearest foot (in some cases, the nearest half-foot)
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ActiveTrans Priority Tool Phase I: Scoping 37 Unlike Walk Score, Bike Score is currently not widely available. Bike Score is being developed for more locations and its development for specific locations can be requested for a fee.
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38 Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Along Existing Roads -- ActiveTrans Priority Tool Guidebook • Local Bicycle Demand Model Spreadsheets: e.g., San Diego County, CA (Jones et al.
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