08fHW5 Comments.
m=59.6, s=25.1, max=90, min=0 (4 reports not submitted)
Imagine that you are the City Engineer of Mythaca (in this case, really West Lafayette). You hire a consultant to collect data on off-campus routes used by bicyclists to reach the university campus. You want to use the data (and the analysis of bicyclist behavior) submitted by the consultant to determine whether (and where) to commit capital funds to provide safer facilities for university-bound bicyclists. You need this information because your capital funds are quite limited. You have many more projects proposed than you can fund. Investing in bicycle facilities must be justified. If only a few bicycle lanes can be funded, you want to know where they will do the most good.
The consultant’s report is submitted to you. You eagerly begin to read it, but something seems wrong. Fortunately, the surveys that were used to support the report’s findings are attached, as the contract required. Some are difficult to understand, but you discover that a large fraction of the surveys submitted are for bicycle trips in which both ends are on campus! You have paid for about 240 surveys, but the consultant has failed to comply with the most critical (and therefore underlined) provisions of the contract: “interview… bicyclists who had one end of their bicycle trip off campus.” As the City Engineer, what action would you take?
The overall criterion for evaluating the work submitted for this HW is whether it was presented clearly and completely enough to be of use to the City Engineer in providing off-campus bicycle facilities where the need is greatest.
- Bicycle Route Choice. Each interview must be of a bicyclist whose trip had one end off campus. Trips with both ends on campus are of no use to the City Engineer. He has no authority to spend his limited funds on bicycle facilities to/from residence halls, Tower Acres, etc. Please read assignments more carefully, especially when important words are underlined.
(+) Showing routes on maps was very helpful. In many cases, it overcame vague word descriptions of trip origins, destinations, and routes chosen.
(-) If you did not specify where in your assigned area you conducted your interviews (or whether you had to go elsewhere), it was difficult to be sure of the trip destination.
- Segment characteristics. If you chose to use a route for this problem that did not have an end not off-campus, it was of no use to the client. If you presented the useless information well, you received a maximum of half credit for Problem 2.
(-) A bicycle path is not the same thing as a bicycle lane. The terms have standard meanings, which were used in the bullet list in Question 1. There is a bicycle path on the east side of McCormick Road, between Cherry Lane and Stadium Ave., and along the south side of Stadium Avenue for a short distance east of McCormick. There is a bicycle lane on both sides of Grant Street, just north of Northwestern. There is also a bicycle lane on the sidewalk on the west side of Grant Street, just south of Northwestern. If the distinction between path and lane is not clear to you, please determine the difference.
(+) Some students devised very clear and concise ways to organize the information requested. Most often, tables or bullet lists work well.
3. Analysis of bicyclist behavior. Ideally, you interviewed at least one bicyclist who used different parts of the cross-section on different segments of his/her route. Whenever possible, use the behavior of the bicyclist from the most instructive interview as the basis of your hypotheses. When this was done, factors such as high traffic flow rates (not ”congestion”), high traffic speeds, and motor vehicles parked along the curb and explained bicyclist use of sidewalks. The absence of a sidewalk, rough surfaces or heavy pedestrian traffic on sidewalks, or low traffic flow and speed caused bicyclists to use the street. There also seemed to be a correlation between helmet use and choice of cross-section component.