University of Washington

15 2014-2015 Annual Report Project: An Examination of the Impact of Increasing Commercial Parking Utilization on Cyclist Safety in Urban Environments • PI: David Hurwitz (OSU), david.hurwitz@oregonstate.edu • Co-Investigators: Edward McCormack (UW), Anne Goodchild (UW) As traffic congestion grows in U.S. urban areas, many cities are encouraging bicycling as an alternative to using cars. Bicycling has the advantage of being less infrastructure-intensive than public transportation, and it has a significantly longer range than walking. Seattle, Portland, and many other U.S. cities have plans to increase their bicycle mode share. Seattle, for example, has a goal of tripling the amount of bicycle commutes between 2007 and 2017. However, as bicycling grows in popularity, conflicts between bicycles and other vehicles have become increasingly problematic. Conflict with freight vehicles is an especially notable problem because of the limited visibility of trucks and the highly severe consequences of bicycle-truck collisions. The overarching goal of this project is to improve both cyclist safety and commercial parking utilization in urban environments. To support this goal, this project will test the impacts of different striping, signage, and infrastructure on cyclist behavior around commercial vehicle (truck) loading zones and will determine the implications for cyclist safety. • Project: Enhancing Safe Traffic Operations Using Connected Vehicles Data and Technologies • PI: Ali Hajbabaie (WSU), ali.hajbabaie@wsu.edu • Co-Investigators: Yinhai Wang (UW), Leila Hajbabai (WSU) In 2012, there were more than 5.6 million crashes, including almost 31,000 fatalities, and more than 1.6 million injuries on U.S. roads as the result of vehicle crashes. These figures call for developing and implementing effective methods to reduce the number and severity of crashes on US roadway system to move towards zero fatalities in the future. Connected Vehicle technology presents great potential to increase the safety of our roadway system by increasing driver situational awareness and reducing or eliminating crashes. Connected Vehicle technology employs dedicated short range wireless communication systems (or cellular systems) to share basic safety messages (e.g. vehicle location, speed, acceleration rate, etc.) between other equipped vehicles, road users, and infrastructure ten times a second. The goal of the proposed research is to use connected vehicles (CVs) data and technologies to improve traffic safety on mixed-use roadway networks (e.g., freeways and intersections). • Project: Development of a Low Cost RWIS • PI: Billy Connor (UAF), bgconnor@alaska.edu This project is developing a prototype low cost, low maintenance Remote Weather Information System (RWIS.) Current RWIS cost in excess of $150,000. The low cost RWIS will be developed in partnership with Weathercloud, Inc. In remote areas they require expensive and high maintenance power generation system since small solar and wind power are unreliable in Alaska. RWIS is used by maintenance to for snow and ice control decisions which directly affect the safety of the travelling public. The development of low cost RWIS will allow an increased number of systems to be deployed which in turn improves the weather and roadway condition information. This data will then be fed into the Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) which is used by maintenance to make decisions about when and where to deploy anti-icing equipment and snow plows.

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