Infrastructure

Health and environmental co-benefits of city urban form in Latin America: an ecological study

Avila-Palencia
Sánchez, BN
Rodriguez, DA
Ferrer, C
Miranda, J
Gouveia, N
2021
Urban design features are often studied in relation to health and behavioural outcomes. They can also have major implications for environmental outcomes. However, the impact of these features on both health and environmental outcomes (co-benefits) is rarely examined. We investigated how urban landscape and street design profiles are related to jointly occurring health and environmental outcomes in Latin America cities. We used data from the Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL) project, which has compiled and harmonised data on built environment, environmental...

Mortality amenable to healthcare in Latin American cities: a cross-sectional study examining between-country variation in amenable mortality and the role of urban metrics

Mullachery, PH
Rodriguez, D
Miranda, J
Lopez-Olmedo, N
Martinez-Folgar, K
Barreto, M
Roux, AV Diez
Bilal, U
2022

This study examined the variation in city-level amenable mortality, i.e. mortality due to conditions that can be mitigated in the presence of timely and effective healthcare, in 363 Latin American cities and measured associations between amenable-mortality rates and urban metrics. We used death records from 363 cities with populations of >100 000 people in nine Latin American countries from 2010 to 2016. We calculated sex-specific age-adjusted amenable-mortality rates per 100 000. We fitted multilevel linear models with cities nested within countries and estimated associations between...

Is self-reported park proximity associated with perceived social disorder? Findings from eleven cities in Latin America

Moran, M
Rodríguez, D
Cortinez-O'Ryan, A
Miranda, JJ
2022
Parks and greenspaces can enhance personal health in various ways, including among others, through psychological restoration and improved well-being. However, under certain circumstances, parks may also have adverse effects by providing isolated and hidden spaces for non-normative and crime-related activities. This study uses a survey conducted by the Development Bank of Latin America in a cross-...

Accessibility, mobility, and transportation innovations in Latin America and the Caribbean: Successes and areas for improvement

Rodriguez, Daniel
2022

High traffic congestion and travel times in the cities of Latin America and the Caribbean have significant impacts on air quality, population health, and well-being. To address these challenges, policy and infrastructure innovations have been proposed and implemented over recent decades. This chapter reviews the current state of mobility and accessibility in the region, with special attention to innovative practices and their impacts on accessibility, especially for low-income populations. Specifically, bus rapid transit and aerial tram infrastructure as well as policy innovations such as...

Marked crosswalks in US transit-oriented station areas, 2007–2020: A computer vision approach using street view imagery

Li, M
Sheng, H
Irvin, J
Chung, H
Ying, A
Sun, T
Ng, A
Rodriguez, D
2022
Improving the built environment to support walking is a popular strategy to increase urban sustainability and walkability. In the past decade alone, many US cities have implemented crosswalk visibility enhancement programs as part of road safety improvements and active transportation plans. However, there are no systematic ways of measuring and monitoring the presence of key built environment attributes that influence the safety and walkability of an area, such as marked crosswalks. Furthermore, little is known about how these attributes change over time at a national scale. In this paper, we...

A scaling investigation of urban form features in Latin America cities

Paiva, SS
Santos, GF
Castro, CP
Rodriguez, DA
Bilal, U
Filho, F
Anderson, F
Montes, F
Dronova, I
Barreto, M
Andrade, R
2023

This paper examines scaling behaviors of urban landscape and street design metrics with respect to city population in Latin America. We used data from the SALURBAL project, which has compiled and harmonized data on health, social, and built environment for 371 Latin American cities above 100,000 inhabitants. These metrics included total urbanized area, effective mesh size, area in km2 and number of streets. We obtained scaling relations by regressing log(metric) on log (city population). The results show an overall sub-linear scaling behavior of most variables, indicating a...

Comparing methods and data sources for classifying bicycle level of traffic stress: How well do their outcomes agree?

Harvey, C
Rodriguez, DA
Fang, K
2024

Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) metrics are widely used to examine how bicyclists may perceive stress along urban streets and identify opportunities for infrastructure improvements. The intuitiveness of the original method, which condensed 18 input variables into four levels, has made LTS very popular among practitioners. Nonetheless, it can be challenging to collect all required inputs. In response, numerous alternative methods have been developed with fewer or different inputs drawn from more general sources, such as OpenStreetMap (OSM) or GIS datasets from local agencies. These...

Effects of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control on Traffic Flow: Testing Drivers' Choices of Following Distances

Shladover, Steven E.
Nowakowski, Christopher
Cody, Delphine
Bu, Fanping
O’Connell, Jessica
Spring, John
Dickey, Susan
Nelson, David
2009

A Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) system has been developed by adding a wireless vehicle-vehicle communication system and new control logic to an existing commercially available adaptive cruise control (ACC) system. The CACC is intended to enhance the vehicle-following capabilities of ACC so that drivers will be comfortable using it at shorter vehicle-following gaps than ACC. If this is shown to be the case, it offers a significant opportunity to increase traffic flow density and efficiency without compromising safety or expanding roadway infrastructure.This report describes the...

Development and Implementation of a Vehicle-Centered Fault Diagnostic and Management System for the Extended PATH-AHS Architecture: Part I

Yi, Jingang
Suryanarayanan, Shashikanth
Howell, Adam
Horowitz, Roberto
Tomizuka, Masayoshi
Hedrick, Karl
Alvarez, Luis
2002

The purpose of this project is to extend and integrate existing results on fault diagnostics and fault management for passenger vehicles used in automated highway systems (AHS). These results have been combined to form a fault diagnostic and management system for the longitudinal and lateral control systems of the automated vehicles which has a hierarchical framework that complements the established PATH control system. Furthermore, the fault diagnostic module effectively monitors the sensors and actuators required for longitudinal and lateral control, while the fault handling module...

VII California: Development and Deployment— Lessons Learned

Misesner, Jim
Dickey, Susan
VanderWerf, Joel
Shrafasaleh, Ashkan
Li, Kang
Tan, Han-Shue
Li, Meng
Zou, Zhi-jun
Bu, Fanping
Huang, Ching-Ling
Xu, Guan
Shladover, Steven;
Kuhn, Tom
Barth, Matt
Todd, Michael
Zhang, Wei-Bin
2009

This PATH Research Report covers the (Vehicle-Infrastructure Integration) VII California Development and Deployment (Task Order 5217) efforts from October 2005 – December 2007. Because TO 5217 is followed by the continuation TO 6127, it is a compendium of very applications-oriented research to date as well as a final report to TO 5217.It is organized to impart the very specific and generally very pragmatic implementation details first, beginning with an introduction (Section 1), description of VII hardware, general network and installation (Section 2), then progressing to a more detailed...