01623064

Component

Although progress has been made on specific components of monitoring and modeling bicycle and pedestrian traffic, few studies merge efforts between collecting traffic counts and developing spatial models to meet multiple objectives. The authors used estimates of bicycle and pedestrian Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) from a comprehensive traffic monitoring campaign in a small rural college town to develop direct-demand models of bicycle and pedestrian AADT. The authors' traffic monitoring campaign (n=101 locations) was designed specifically to capture spatial variability in traffic patterns while controlling for temporal bias. Lacking existing counts of bicycle and pedestrian traffic, the authors chose count sites based on street functional class and centrality (a measure of trip potential). The authors' direct-demand models had reasonable goodness-of-fit (bicycle [pedestrian] R2: 0.52 [0.71]). The authors found that aspects of the transportation network (bicycle facilities, bus stops, centrality) as well as land use (population density, residential addresses) were correlated with bicycle and pedestrian AADT. Furthermore, spatial patterns of bicycle and pedestrian traffic were different, justifying separate monitoring and modeling of these modes. A strength of the authors' analysis is that they were able to conduct counts at a representative sample of all street and trail segments in Blacksburg (~5.5% of segments) –an advantage of monitoring in a small community. The authors demonstrated that it is possible to design traffic monitoring campaigns with multiple goals (e.g., estimating performance measures, developing spatial models). The authors' work serves as a proof-of-concept on a relatively small transportation network; their approach could be extended to larger urban areas.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF10 Standing Committee on Pedestrians.

01618707

17-01710

English

13p

2017

Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Annual average daily traffic; Bicycles; Land use; Networks; Pedestrian traffic; Performance measurement; Rural areas; Traffic surveillance

Bicycle traffic; Proof of concept; Spatial patterns

Blacksburg (Virginia)

Operations and Traffic Management; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2017 Paper #17-01710

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 8 2016 10:35AM