01697849

Component

Studies show the relationship of many environmental factors with the safety of bicycle transportation, including street infrastructure, urban densities, safety-in-numbers, and others. However, no work to date includes the relationship of street-level noise with the safety of vulnerable road users. This study deploys bicycle-mounted smartphones with apps recording noise in A-weighted decibels with GPS points to explore this issue for the first time in Austin, Texas, and the Washington, DC Capital Area. The initial exploration of results shows inconsistent results between the cities, with no direct relationship between street noise and exposure-normalized crash rates. However, when considering infrastructure and nearby bicycle commute share rates with street noise, the model in the Washington, DC Capital Area explained over 87% of the variation in crash risk. This approach to street noise data collection invites other explorations of the relationship of street noise to vulnerable road safety to improve future guidance for transportation planning and engineering.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Standing Committee on Bicycle Transportation.

19-03944

English

15p

2019

Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Bicycle facilities; Bicycling; Safety; Sound level; Traffic noise; Vulnerable road users

Austin (Texas); Washington (District of Columbia)

Environment; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2019 Paper #19-03944

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 7 2018 9:39AM