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PRISM Engineering NEWS

Traffic Engineering is evolving around the world




Video location:  ChongQING CHINA, 2018 BY GRANT JOHNSON, TE

Bike and Pedestrian Fatalities Higher than Ever in USA in 2018

5/7/2018

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Bike and Pedestrian Fatalities Higher than Ever in USA.  Current Methods of Safety Not Working to Reduce Fatalities

The bottom line is, the needle is not moving in the right direction to make people safer. 

With all of the billions that have been spent in the last decade to improve bike facilities and pedestrian facilities, we should see the number of fatalities each year drop. But just the opposite has been happening. 
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Isn't it is time to wake up and acknowledge this and consider current methods?  Methods like Cycle Tracks, more frequent Cross Walks, more Pedestrian Signals, Road Diets, and Complete Streets.  All of these are relatively new pushes in the USA, and we are seeing now the data that shows fatalities are UP. 

Way up.

The graph to the left shows that pedestrians are being killed in much higher numbers and rates now compared to a decade ago.


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If there are 37,000+ vehicle related deaths each year in the USA, and Pedestrians account for 15% of these, and they used to be only 11%, then this 4% increase represents 1,500 MORE pedestrian deaths each year compare to just 10 years ago.  The 37,000+ number is also at a peak.

Obviously, whatever is the mainstream safety push for transportation is not working to even bring down the number of fatalities each year in the USA, in fact, it is going the opposite direction.  Current methods are clearly not working and should be reconsidered as a whole.  Nobody quite understands this counter-intuitive result, but the Governor's Highway safety Association is aware of it. Here is what they are saying:

"IT IS ALARMING," says GHSA* executive director Jonathan Adkins, "and it's counter-intuitive." (*Governor's Highway safety Association). 



We need to pay attention to the facts, the accident history. "There's been an assumption that, because of increased safety of vehicles as we move toward semi-autonomous vehicles, that traffic deaths were going to go down," Adkins says. "We're seeing just the opposite, unfortunately, with a particular spike as it relates to pedestrians and cyclists."

from NPR's
Pedestrian Fatalities Remain At 25-Year High For Second Year In A Row:
After two years of marked increases, the number of pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. is holding steady with nearly 6,000 pedestrians killed in 2017, according to estimates from the Governors Highway Safety Association.

That's a 25-year high, GHSA says. While the rise "appears to be tapering off," the group said, the "continuation of pedestrian fatalities at virtually the same pace ... raises continued concerns about the nation's alarming pedestrian death toll."

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New traffic methods for PEDS/Bikes have not moved the needle. They LOOK good, but... Cycle Tracks and XWalks are not solving it. PED bridges are not cutting the fatalities (UP! to 40k / year in USA) ...no improvements! "Vision Zero" as currently envisioned seems beyond reach. We need new Engineered & real solutions that will eliminate mixing of vulnerable travel modes with vehicles.  J-Walkers, PEDS crossing paths with vehicles, cyclists mixing with cars/trucks assuming safety, while traveling along side some incompetent or risk-taking drivers: HUMAN factors... and not Improving.


The assumption that any kind of "new and improved" traffic control device specifically for PEDS or BIKES will make them safer needs to be questioned, since the accident fatality data does not bear this out. The needle has been moving in just the opposite direction, and we can no longer assume that more striping, different striping, or even complete streets will make pedestrians safer. What needs to happen is a realization that MORE pedestrians mingled with Vehicles on roadways where cars/trucks can hit people directly, is turning out to be a dangerous thing.
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Rental Bikes Popping up En Masse in Cities All Over the World in 2018

4/27/2018

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Encourage, Don't Hamper, Green Solutions

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It's Green! It's Electric! Part of an Active Lifestyle.

But San Francisco is basically banning E-Scooters after complaints by some pedestrians who think the riders are "very rude." With all the transportation challenges SF has, does this seem like the right focus??   It is more or less being shut down because SF is impounding most of these scooters.

This has already been tried in China with varying success, but bad actor renters among the many who have rented are causing some grief, where those riders leave the scooter in the wrong places after using it. If that could be solved... but this is like trying to solve bad human behavior by going after a company who can't control the behavior of the users/renters. It would be akin to going after AVIS car rentals when their customers park in the wrong places, speed, or block a bike lane, etc.   We have a law enforcement solution for that: called getting a ticket.  Scooter riders could get a ticket. It could be part of the rental agreement too.




I think punishing companies is the wrong approach. Cities need to PLAN BETTER FACILITIES for parking bikes or scooters, if they are going to actively encourage people to get out of their cars!  This is exactly what many involved with Transportation policy and planning are trying to do, get people out of their cars to make it more safe, more green... I believe it would be more helpful to find ways to accommodate and encourage entrepreneurs thinking outside of that box... not punishing them because of a few loose ends.

If e scooters are deemed a safety issue, there are surely more important safety issues that need to be solved first, like truly doing things to eliminate the 37,000+ fatalities with vehicles every single year in the USA.


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www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-scooter-skirmish-City-escalates-battle-12849499.php#photo-15423376

The SOLUTION seems easy enough:

Many cities are impatiently shutting down bike sharing companies, confiscating their bikes and impounding them, because of bike or scooter clutter after some users leave them in undesirable areas.  And some residents have an aversion to something new that is left around like clutter.

The solution seems easy.  The Bike Rental Companies can have these renters return the bikes to an appropriate area or face a steep surcharge (like 50 bucks on their credit card).  Then the company can have their staff come pick up the rental bike immediately after the $50 charge, and get it relocated to an appropriate parking area. EASY!

NEXT!!!

Here's a video of a NEW YORKER sharing his experience comparing

New York's' citibike program to riding a taxi,
or having your own bike...

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Autonomous Self-Driving Cars and Trucks and Transit

3/9/2018

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Often depicted in way over simplified conceptual drawings, the Autonomous Vehicle is consistently misunderstood.

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Autonomous Vehicles: In order for there to be compelling reason to incur the impact and expense of potentially retooling the entire vehicle industry, there would need to be compelling improvements to safety, capacity / efficiency, as well as the environment.  The autonomous vehicle has in principle, the capacity to improve all three, but the conceptual illustrations one can find today on the internet when searching for "autonomous vehicles" leave much to be desired... they generate more questions than answers in one's mind.  They are confusing.  Such as why does a picture show all this "connectivity and sensors" from each vehicle, but the traffic pattern on the freeway is identical to existing conditions?  Where is the benefit?  Capacity increase? Or why would one think that it would be a good idea to show vehicles criss-crossing past each other at right angles in an uncontrolled intersection, narrowly missing bumpers, as if that is a safe idea or design?  Logically, it's not.  A roundabout would be a much better idea, lower speeds, and significantly reduced conflict points (goes from 9 potential conflicts down to just 1).  In fact, it doesn't make any sense to introduce such a fallible and dangerous situation where serious injury can take place if technology fails in any way.  Also, what about bikes and pedestrians in such a situation? Its as if there were no serious thought put into these concepts when it comes to having Complete Streets.
UBER Autonomous car hits pedestrian.  news makes it look like autonomous is not safe
In my view, to be fair, a pedestrian was walking their bike across two lanes of a four lane boulevard that had a large median, in the dark, no crosswalks, becasue it was nowhere near an intersection opening (she was crossing a left turn bay first, an area where pedestrians are never expected.  Technically, the pedestrian walking her bike was jaywalking in a high speed area, in the dark.  In the video the bike is visible at a distance of about 60-100 feet (only three dashed stripes visible, 72 feet distance) .  However, for a 45 mph roadway, the Safe Stopping Sight Distance is 360 feet.  The car was traveling 40 mph, and a human would need 300 feet to stop in time. There is no way this was possible for a human driver to avoid even if they had seen her 200 feet back instead of 100.  By the time a human's foot lifts from the floor to press the brake pedal, at least one second has gone by.  They would have already hit this pedestrian before the vehicle even had a chance to slow down.   Thne formula for this is dPRT = 1.47 Vt (US Customary), which means there is at least 60 feet of travel distance at 40 mph before the driver would even PERCEIVE that they need to hit the brake. Then there is the time for the foot to lift from the floor to the pedal and hit the brake.  The pedestrian in the mean time, in this case, is hit, with or without an autonomous vehicle.
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The cyclist/pedestrian did not look at the approaching car, until the last second, it was as if they were oblivious to the dangers of crossing a street, a straight street, where it would be extremely easy to see oncoming headlights.   Who is at fault?  In my view, absolutely the pedestrian.  Because it was dark, this pedestrian was not readily visible with headlights.  Yes, the UBER car's lidar or radar most certainly should have picked this up in the dark as it does not need light to function, but it failed on that.  This is irrelevant as to why this accident happened, it would  have happened with a regular driver and a regular car.  A human would not have been able to react in time based on our most basic standards of road design.  This is a completely unfair story and writeup, painting some narrative that driverless cars are more dangerous than human drivers.  Not if this accident would have happened otherwise.  How often pedestrians in the path of moving vehicles at night, have been hit.  How dangerous it is for a pedestrian to cross a street in the dark, with oncoming traffic, and fail to yield the right of way, while remaining mostly invisible?  
what components are in an autonomous car ?
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Stopping Sight Distance = PERCEPTION TIME + REACTION TIME + BRAKING TIME
​Autonomous vehicles theoretically change this equation to: SuperFast PERCEPTION TIME + SuperFast REACTION TIME + BRAKING TIME where the braking time remains the same because it is a function of tires, speed, friction, etc., but the Perception Time is a fraction of what humans need to make a decision that they need to brake...theoretically, and the Reaction Time is greatly shortened because no human foot has to move from the floor to get above the pedal to push it.

Any Autonomous Vehicle solution MUST also take into consideration the entire body of transportation modes, especially pedestrians and bikes.  A pedestrian or cyclist will never be in the autonomous category, so these are mixed transportation use situations.

Good examples of extreme traffic situations can be found in China where density is consistently very high throughout urban cities.  n Chongqing China there are residential and business skyscrapers that go on and on for miles and miles, averaging 30 stories tall.  ​
Sidewalks are necessarily very wide, from 10 to 20 feet, to accommodate numerous pedestrians. The video to the right shows an area of the massive City of Chongqing where vehicle traffic has been completely separated from pedestrian traffic as a need.  There are so many pedestrians in the area of skyscrapers, that it was not practical to have these interact with vehicles via crosswalks controlled by signal.  There is not enough capacity. 

​The solution in this video was to literally BURY the traffic in a submerged roadway, and build a pedestrian square that extended numerous blocks and built on top of the submerged four lane road.  The pedestrians never hear the traffic below, and safety is greatly enhanced.  
THIS is a compelling reason to implement such an expensive change for the benefit of all, including drivers of vehicles.  90% of residents in Chongqing do NOT own or drive a car.   As one watches the video of regular drivers on these massive 9-lane roadways, one can think of what benefit would come to the system if all vehicles were autonomous.  In my view, safety would not only improve, but efficiency as well and capacity could be tripled as vehicles perfectly coordinate the merging, with tighter headways, and regulated speeds.

So What will an Autonomous Vehicle transportation system look like? What must it look like?

First of all, it must be safe for pedestrians.  In the China video above, the pedestrians are completely separated from the vehicle traffic, because it is not safe or practical to ever have these meet in such high numbers.  So there must be separation. There must be grade separation (or in the case of the China video above, a complete separation of vehicle traffic by tunnel if necessary). Grade separations are expensive, but to have a truly autonomous system and remove the human error factor that introduces accidents, often fatal accidents, a separation is needed.  If a car is going 60 mph autonomously, and a child runs in front of it, the car no matter how automated, cannot stop in time, and fatality may occur, traffic will come to standstill, etc.  We grade separate freeways, and now all roads with autonomous vehicles will need some method of separation in order to achieve the desired levels of safety, of capacity, of efficiency, even the environment and air quality.  Fences.  Ped and Bike bridges.  Even signal systems tied in to the autonomous computer system, coordinated and optimized for safety of peds and bikes.

​The future of traffic engineering will be to develop solutions that actually make sense, are safe and efficient, and which can take existing right-of way and turn it into a system where cars are separated from the pedestrians and bikes to improve safety, capacity, efficiency and air quality.
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Bike, Ped, and Vehicle Traffic Safety getting a much bigger emphasis in CEQA

3/1/2016

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Traffic Engineering and analysis in California has been evolving with the advent of SB 743.   Safety has always been the primary focus of true Traffic Engineering, creating safe travel conditions for all modes of travel.  SB 743 in California has specific elements within this law that place more focus on traffic safety including:
(3) Local Safety.
In addition to a project’s effect on vehicle miles traveled, a lead agency may also consider localized effects of project-related transportation on safety.
​Examples of objective factors that may be relevant may include:

       (A) Increase exposure of bicyclists and pedestrians in vehicle conflict areas (i.e., remove pedestrian and bicycle facilities, increase roadway crossing times or distances, etc.).
       (B) Contribute to queuing on freeway off-ramps where queues extend onto the mainline.
       (C) Contribute to speed differentials of greater than 15 miles per hour between adjacent travel lanes.
       (D) Increase motor vehicle speeds.
       (E) Increase distance between pedestrian or bicycle crossings.
source: New Section 15064.3(b)(3) (preliminary OPR guidance for SB 743)
Staff at PRISM Engineering have decades of experience in preparing traffic and transportation plans with emphasis on traffic safety, utilizing guidance found in AASHTO publications, Highway Design Manual, MUTCD publications, etc., which focus on time-tested methods of design and implementation that enhance and improve safety.  
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        • SAFETY FIRST focus at PRISM Engineering
        • Autonomous Road Design
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      • Autonomous Transportation Planning
    • HSR Construction Inspection Experience
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  • TRAFFIC FACTS
    • INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC FACTS
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    • Modern Roundabout Examples by PRISM Engineering
    • Death by NYC Subway: PED DANGERS
    • AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES in Traffic >
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      • Autonomous UBER Fatal Accident
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