Safety

Automated Assessment of Safety-Critical Dynamics in Multi-modal Transportation Systems

Grembek, Offer
Ragland, David
2016

With the advent of emerging technologies, urban intersections are being increasingly equipped with various types of video-based and in-pavement sensing systems to facilitate round-the-clock monitoring and optimization of multi-modal flows. In comparison, the assessment of the safety performance of these facilities continues to be largely based on either crash history or citizen grievances. Herein lies an opportunity to apply advanced sensing platforms to proactively monitor safety-critical events of multi-modal road users. This work presents a traffic safety monitoring framework which...

Experimental Studies for Traffic Incident Management

Brownstone, David
McBride, Michael
Kong, Si-Yuan
Mahmassani, Amine
2017

This report documents the second year of a project using economics experimental techniques to investigate novel approaches for mitigating congestion caused by non-recurring traffic incidents. The first year demonstrated the feasibility of this approach and carried out a number of experiments using University of California, Irvine (UCI) undergraduates as experimental subjects. The experimental platform is described in Section 3 of this report. Most of the experiments conducted during the first year examined different variable message sign (VMS) wording, and later experiments examined...

Transit Oriented Development and Commercial Gentrification: Exploring the Linkages

Chapple, Karen
Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia
Gonzalez, Silvia R.
Kadin, Dov
Poirer, Joseph
2018

As central cities in California continue their renaissance, commercial gentrification is often identified by residents as a concern. For many, commercial gentrification means the intrusion of new businesses that force out a favorite food shop or a longstanding retail store because of higher rents. For others, it means an influx of hip cafés, trendy retail boutiques, and gourmet fast food restaurants - places that change the fabric of their familiar neighborhood, for better or for worse. For many merchants, commercial gentrification can have implications for economic survival, as increased...

Testing Wildfire Evacuation Strategies and Coordination Plans for Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Communities in California

Soga, Kenichi, PhD
Comfort, Louise, PhD
Li, Pengshun
Zhao, Bingyu, PhD
Lorusso, Paola
2024

In the event of a wildfire, government agencies need to make quick, well-informed decisions to safely evacuate people. Small communities, such as in Marin County, with a mix of residences and flammable vegetation in Wildland-Urban Interface zones tend to lack resources to conduct evacuation studies. Consequently, this study uses a framework of wildfire and traffic simulations to test the performance of potential evacuation strategies, including reducing the volume of evacuating vehicles through car-pooling, phasing evacuations by staggering evacuation times by zone, and prohibiting street...

Review of California Wildfire Evacuations from 2017 to 2019

Wong, Stephen D.
Broader, Jacquelyn C.
Shaheen, Susan A., PhD
2020

Between 2017 and 2019, California experienced a series of devastating wildfires that together led over one million people to be ordered to evacuate. Due to the speed of many of these wildfires, residents across California found themselves in challenging evacuation situations, often at night and with little time to escape. These evacuations placed considerable stress on public resources and infrastructure for both transportation and sheltering. In the face of these clear challenges, transportation and emergency management agencies across California have widely varying levels of preparedness...

Research Synthesis for the California Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force

Grembek, Offer, PhD
Chen, Katherine
Taylor, Brian D., PhD
Hwang, Yu Hong
Fitch, Dillon, PhD
Anthoine, Sonia
Chen, Bingchu
Grover, Salvador
2020

This research synthesis consists of a set of white papers that jointly provide a review of research on the current practicefor setting speed limits and future opportunities to improve roadway safety. This synthesis was developed to inform thework of the Zero Traffic Fatalities Task Force, which was formed in 2019 by the California State Transportation Agencyin response to California Assembly Bill 2363 (Friedman). The statutory goal of the Task Force is to develop a structured,coordinated process for early engagement of all parties to develop policies to reduce traffic fatalities to zero....

Development Of The Flight Crew Human Factors Integration Tool

Gosling, Geoffrey D.
Roberts, Karlene H.
1998

In May 1996, the FAA announced a new and innovative approach to reach a goal of "zero accidents," known as the Global Analysis and Information Network (GAIN). This would be a privately owned and operated international information infrastructure for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of aviation safety information. It would involve the use of a broad variety of worldwide aviation data sources, coupled with comprehensive analytical techniques, to facilitate the identification of existing and emerging aviation safety problems. A major component of the GAIN approach is the application...

East Oakland Mobility Justice: A Case Study of the International Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit Project Safety and Displacement

Soucy, Andre B.
2024

Low-income communities of color in formerly redlined neighborhoods face persistent racial disparities and inequities in pollution exposure, access to transportation and safe streets, and inadequate provisions for health, safety, stable housing, clean air, education, and employment. In the process of attempting to remedy such disparities through major transportation infrastructure and access improvements, residents who are intended to benefit from expanded transportation access and options are often placed at increased risk of harmful displacement, gentrification, and environmental...

Best Practices for the Public Management of Electric Scooters

Reinhardt, Karl
Deakin, Elizabeth, SM., J.D.
2020

This research projects evaluates the social, environmental, and safety impacts of shared electric scooters (e-scooters)’ through a literature review, a nationwide scan of state and local laws and regulations, and a case study of Oakland’s experience with e-scooters, including an analysis of the city’s user survey and our own in-depth interviews. E-scooters offer an enjoyable, low-cost travel option, but are used mainly by young, affluent, white males. To improve equity, cities are requiring e-scooter rental companies to serve low-income and minority communities and some further mandate...

The Development Of An Accident Database To Structure Land Use Regulations In Airport Runway Approach Zones Part II

Cooper, Douglas L.
Chira-chavala, T.
1998

This report presents and describes the expanded database containing 873 aviation accidents which occurred within five miles of an airport. Section 2 contains a description of the development of the database and a discussion of the criteria used in selecting accidents for the database. Section 3 provides a description of the database itself as well as a set of statistics that provide a comprehensive overview of the accidents. A set of aircraft accident scatter plots developed from the accident data points is presented in section 4. The purpose of these plots is to provide a picture of the...