Pedestrians

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...

Marked crosswalks are the primary means of safeguarding pedestrian travel at intersections in American cities. In the face of decades-high pedestrian fatalities nationwide, the provision of adequate cross walks is highly salient. Though, how they are spatially distributed across an entire city, and vary by neighborhood, has drawn little academic scrutiny. Given that, this study utilizes satellite imagery to map the presence of marked crosswalks throughout San Francisco, a dense, walkable city that has struggled to reach its pedestrian-safety goals. For the first time, this allows for a...

The primary objective of this paper is to review the appropriate use of ratio variables in the study of pedestrian injury exposure. We provide a discussion that rejects the assumption that the relationship between a random variable (e.g., a population X) and a ratio (e.g., injury or disease per population Y/X) is necessarily negative. In the study of pedestrian risk, the null hypothesis is that pedestrian injury risk is constant with respect to pedestrian volume. This study employs a unique data set containing the number of pedestrian collisions, average annual pedestrian volume, average...

This paper describes an innovative pedestrian modeling technique known as Space Syntax, which was used to create estimates of pedestrian volumes for the city of Oakland, California. These estimates were used to calculate pedestrian exposure rates and to create a Relative Risk Index for the city’s first pedestrian master plan. A major challenge facing planners, transportation engineers, and pedestrian-safety advocates is the lack of detailed and high quality pedestrian-exposure data. Exposure is defined as the rate of contact with a potentially harmful agent or event. Pedestrian exposure is...