In 1969, about 40% of American elementary school children walked or biked to school. In 2001, we dropped down to about 15%. This is due to a shift in students living more than half a mile away from their school. Not surprisingly, kids getting dropped off in private vehicles went from 15% to 50% over that same time period. (Source: NHTS Data Series)
I just tuned into a webinar by the Institute of Transportation Engineers' on designing safer school site's that work for all modes of traffic (personal cars, bikes, walking, school buses, and public transit). Here's a summary of things to consider when developing a school site design:
Picking a Good School Site for Traffic Operations
Gary Lauder designed this sign that is supposed to function in between a stop sign and a yield sign (Bill - thanks for posting this on the listserv). I'm with Mr. Lauder in spirit - I am a proponent of using more yield signs and less stop signs. There's no reason to come to a complete stop if there's no one else at an intersection.
The yield sign has the same meaning as Mr. Lauder's sign, so I don't see a need for this new sign. The idea behind a sign is that we can see the symbol and quickly determine how we are supposed to react. There is a lot of information to absorb with the proposed sign. Plus the placard below the sign is ambiguous at best. Again the rules for stop signs and yield signs are crystal clear (first come, first serve - the vehicle on the right goes first if two vehicles arrived at the same time). I like creativity, but I don't see a place for the proposed sign.
Here is a guest post from Micah Heckman of Lancaster Engineering in Portland, OR (Thanks Micah). It's a quick report on a workshop he recently attended on roundabouts.
The
roundabout workshop was somewhat useful although it may have been more useful
for roadway designers. They did have some discussion on the 2010 HCM but
they did not have any examples as I was hoping. A few things I did come
away with:
-
NCHRP
3-65/Report 572 is the basis for HCM 2010 but HCM 2010 will move beyond the
NCHRP report.
-
The
LOS output
o will be based on control
delay
o will be assigned to each
lane, approach, and intersection
o delay thresholds will be
the same as for TWSC and AWSC intersections
One
interesting point of note was from a presentation by a representative of the
City of Bend, Oregon which is a large proponent of roundabouts (I believe 28
installed since 1999 in a town of 82,000 people). They, along with
Kittelson & Assoc. worked on locally calibrating the roundabout model and
found that in Bend, the critical gap was 1 second less that reported in NCHRP
572 (4.1 sec vs. 5.1 sec) and the follow-up headway was 0.5 seconds less (2.7
sec vs. 3.2 sec). It appears as if this is a result of experience using
roundabouts.
It
will be nice once HCM 2010 is released to be able to have this analysis
alternative readily available. We currently don’t do a whole lot of work
with roundabouts but there are certain instances (a new development with no
right-of-way restrictions) that would a good location for a roundabout.
Yanko Design has come up with the Virtual Wall concept (it was discussed on the ITE Traffic Engineering Listserv this week - thanks Pradeep). It's basically a hologram that will pop up between the cars and crosswalk when pedestrians in the crosswalk have the walk signal. Regular readers know I'm quite open to new ideas related to our industry. This one doesn't strike me as a good one though.
The virtual wall doesn't provide any more protection for the pedestrian. A mom could still be turned around dealing with her baby's pacifier and blow through the intersection - hologram and all. Sure, the mom would be at fault and would probably end up doing jail time for maiming/killing the pedestrian. But I'd rather have pedestrians (including me and my kids) be cautious and alive instead of "right" and dead.
Now as a traffic engineer I might be in favor of the traffic signal's computer forcing the car to brake so they can't run a red light, but I'll stop before I step into Big Brother land.
On a side note. The picture shows the hologram up when the signal is yellow. I'd think the hologram would pop up after the light turns red. Imagine the liability of shooting a hologram right in front of someone's face when they're legally entering the intersection?
