Pedestrian and Bicyclist Data: Challenges and Opportunities Shawn Turner Texas Transportation Institute TRB Annual Meeting—Session 425 Washington, DC ~ January 12, 2010

2 Overview What does “ped-bike data” mean? Why is it important? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities?

Bicycle and Pedestrian Data 1.Usage, trip & user characteristics –Counts, surveys 2.Facilities (inventory) –LOS, quality of travel 3.Crash & safety data 4.User preferences 5.Secondary data –Research and evaluation data 3

Why is walking and cycling data important? “What gets measured, gets done” “If you’re not counted, you don’t count” Same reasons as for other modes –Support policy decisions/changes –Plan for cost-effective investments –Design safe facilities and infrastructure –Measure performance and progress toward goals 4

Portland Examples 5 Source: US Census, prepared by Roger Geller, City of Portland

Portland Examples 6 Source: Roger Geller, City of Portland

Portland Examples 7 Source: Roger Geller, City of Portland

Portland Examples 8 Source: Roger Geller, City of Portland

Challenges “The forgotten modes” (Tom Larson) Typically lower priority, fewer resources Typically small numbers, high variability Typically on city streets, not major highways Difficult to automatically count/measure Scale of facilities 9

Opportunities and Advances - 1 “Grassroots” efforts from within the pedestrian/bicyclist community 10

Opportunities and Advances - 2 Map and navigation industry efforts 11

Opportunities and Advances - 2 Map and navigation industry efforts 12

Opportunities and Advances - 2 Map and navigation industry efforts 13

Opportunities and Advances - 3 Pocket-sized, location-aware mobile devices + crowdsourcing and social media 14

Opportunities and Advances - 3 Pocket-sized, location-aware mobile devices + crowdsourcing and social media 15

Opportunities and Advances Source: Jennifer Dill, Portland State Univ.

Concluding Thoughts Progress is being made Exploit available technology Don’t let perfect data be the enemy of good data 17

Questions?? 18