Over the past decade, national policy and legislation have reflected a goal to increase the amount of pedestrian activity and the safety of pedestrians. The 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act and 1997 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century transportation bills promote planning for pedestrians and bicyclists as a part of statewide and metropolitan transportation planning efforts. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has also had a significant impact on pedestrian research in the last decade. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) 1994 National Bicycling and Walking Study, mandated by Congress, made policy recommendations for doubling the number of trips made by bicycling and walking and for decreasing pedestrian and bicycle injuries and fatalities by 10%. Many of the research topics in this document are related to these goals. Pedestrians are an important and omnipresent part of a multimodal transportation system that includes also bicycle, transit, and automobile travel. Pedestrian travel is a non-polluting mode that allows people to exercise as they move from place to place. The presence of pedestrians on local streets can also indicate a healthy community environment. An emerging area of research is the relationship between pedestrian activity and personal and community health. Pedestrian research involves a wide range of topics, from designing individual crosswalks and intersections to accommodate all pedestrians, to installing continuous sidewalks throughout neighborhoods and roadway corridors, to altering roadway design to slow traffic, to providing pedestrian access to buildings and transit stops. Research on signal timing, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications, the design of sidewalks and crossings, driver yielding behavior, and pedestrian detection should consider impacts on different groups of pedestrians, including children, the elderly, and people with all types of physical disabilities, including those in human-powered and motorized wheelchairs. When the word “pedestrian” is used in this document, it refers to all types of pedestrians. This document presents the top 16 pedestrian Research Problem Statements, prioritized from a list of approximately 80 Research Problem Statements by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Pedestrians (ANF10). The original list of approximately 80 Research Problem Statements comprised statements garnered by the TRB over several years, plus a list of research topics gathered from researchers and practitioners around the country during 2001 by Charles Zegeer of the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center. The top 15 rankings of each of the committee member respondents were combined by the Subcommittee on Research to determine a final top 15 list. Members of the subcommittee also chose to add a 16th Research Problem Statement on the Segway Human Intermodal Transporter (SHT). The topics in the original list of statements can be classified into nine categories that suggest the broad agenda of pedestrian research: 1. Demand management and forecasting, 2. Crash and risk analysis, 3. Design and engineering (standards and guidelines), 4. Pedestrian facility evaluation, 5. Policy and planning, 6. Land use and urban design, 7. Enforcement and education, 8. Health and physical activity, and 9. Pedestrians with disabilities. The titles and objectives of the original research problem statements are provided in the appendix of this document. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting