Center for Transportation Research News

The City of Austin is testing four bicycle safety improvements with research involvement of the Center for Transportation Research. KVUE News in Austin covers “sharrows” in a news segment today; the video is posted online.

http://www.kvue.com/news/Austin-part-of-bike-and-car-sharing-experiment-68806662.html

Anyone driving, walking or cycling down Guadalupe between MLK and 4th street Monday may have seen them being installed and wondered what they were.

City employees from the Austin Public Works department spent the better part of Monday installing sixteen, 3 by 2 foot symbols of a man on a bicycle into traffic lanes called “Sharrows”.

The lanes are to be shared between cars and cyclists, but neither the city of Austin nor the U.T. Center for Transportation Research will go into the details of how they’re supposed to work because the “Sharrows” are part of a nationwide experiment.

The U.S. Department of Transportation chose Austin as one of six cities across the country to try out the “Sharrows” to see if drivers and cyclists can figure out on their own how they work. The city of Austin and U.T. have installed cameras in strategic areas of the”Sharrows” to collect video to be shared with the federal government to see whether or not the “Sharrows” are working.

“This device was first used in San Francisco and it’s part of a research project and ongoing data collection to see how these devices function in the field”, said Jason Wilkes an employee with the City of Austin’s Public Works Department.

70 “Sharrows” are expected to be installed across the city by the end of the week according to Wilkes.

“We put 16 in today, it was our first day working. We’re putting them in on Guadalupe, Lavaca, on Dean Keeton next to the lanes that we already put in earlier this year and then up on 51st street”, said Wilkes.

The “Sharrows” are just one of four bicycle safety improvements the city of Austin is spending $97,000 on in the next six months.

http://www.kvue.com/news/Austin-part-of-bike-and-car-sharing-experiment-68806662.html

Stolen and vandalized rental bikes challenge a system designed to reduce congestion in France.

Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.

Renters of Vélib’ bicycles in Paris say it can be a challenge to find functioning ones among those that have been vandalized. In Paris 80 percent of Vélib’ bicycles are stolen or damaged.

Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations and pedal to their destinations, an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus.

But this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.

Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, “One must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars,” referring to gangs of immigrant youths burning cars during riots in the suburbs in 2005.

He said he believed there was social revolt behind Vélib’ vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glamorous side of Paris.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31bikes.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

The October Research Digest highlights recent TxDOT Research Reports. The issue is available online as a PDF. Recent reports from CTR, TTI, and UTSA are included in the digest. Links to full-text PDFs for each report are provided in the digest.

The Research Digest is a monthly newsletter targeted towards TxDOT staff and researchers. The goal of the Digest is to showcase new publications the library has received.

An archive of past issues is available on the CTR Library website.

In a joint venture with the City of Austin, The Center for Transportation Research will be conducting research to improve the safety of cyclists utilizing some experimental roadway features, including shared lane markings, painted bicycle lanes, signs and bicycle boxes.

To cater to Austin’s large population of bicyclists, UT teamed up with the city to study four experimental lane designs.

The city of Austin and the UT Center for Transportation Research are studying the effects of the designs to improve the safety of bicyclists and motorists on the streets of Austin.

These findings may have an impact on the way the U.S., as a whole, implements traffic control devices.

“The hope with all traffic control devices is that they will help provide the safest and most efficient experience for all users,” Machemehl said.

Machemehl said the project’s success could mean the devices being included in the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which sets the standard for traffic control devices on the nation’s highways and streets.

Read The Daily Texan article here.

National Geographic has posted an informative article on the history and evolution of “daylight savings time” in the U.S.

The Dawn of Daylight Saving Time

The U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., sets what is known as standard time in the country through its maintenance of atomic clocks. But the observatory has nothing to do with regulating daylight saving time.

Oversight of daylight saving time first resided with the Interstate Commerce Commission. In 1966 the U.S. Congress transferred that responsibility to the newly created Department of Transportation.

Congress ordered the transportation agency to “foster and promote widespread and uniform adoption and observance of the same standard of time within and throughout each such standard time zone.”

So why is a transportation authority in charge of time laws? It all dates back to the heyday of railroads.

“In the early 19th century … localities set their own time,” said Bill Mosley, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“It was kind of a crazy quilt of time, time zones, and time usage. When the railroads came in, that necessitated more standardization of time so that railroad schedules could be published.”

In 1883 the U.S. railroad industry established official time zones with a set standard time within each zone. Congress eventually came on board, signing the railroad time zone system into law in 1918.

The only federal regulatory agency in existence at that time happened to be the Interstate Commerce Commission, so Congress granted the agency authority over time zones and any future modifications that might be necessary.

Part of the 1918 law also legislated for the observance of daylight saving time nationwide. That section of the act was repealed the following year, and daylight saving time thereafter became a matter left up to local jurisdictions.

Daylight saving time was observed nationally again during World War II but was not uniformly practiced after the war’s end.

Finally, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the start and end dates for daylight saving time but allowed individual states to remain on standard time if their legislatures allowed it.

A 1972 amendment extended the option not to observe daylight saving time to areas on the border of two time zones but within the same U.S. state.

Before the move by Congress in 2005 to extend daylight saving time, the most recent modification occurred in 1986, when the start date was moved from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April.

Read more at their article on the National Geographic Website:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091026-daylight-savings-time-2009-fall-back.html

Tom White for The New York Times

Transit systems from New York to Taipei, and from Ames, Iowa, to Ann Arbor, Mich., are adding hybrid buses at a rapid clip. New York, by far, has the nation’s biggest fleet of hybrid buses, which run on electricity and diesel fuel, with nearly 1,000 in all five boroughs, most in Manhattan.

Even though the initial cost is higher than diesel buses, hybrids have become popular among city transit systems, thanks to better fuel economy, less pollution, and a quieter, more comfortable ride.

Read more in the New York Times article.

The LBJ School of Public Affairs, Office of Conferences and Training is pleased to announce that the 2009 Ethics is Government conference will be held in Austin on next week on Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

This conference will feature:

The Opening Keynote:  Robert Hoyk, Ph.D., co-author of the book “The Ethical Executive:  Becoming Aware of the Root Causes of Unethical Behavior: 45 Psychological Traps that Every One of Us Falls Prey To”. He will discuss many of the psychological traps that were identified in the book.  Every participant will receive a copy of the book with their registration.

The Afternoon Address - Former Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff will discuss Ethical Leadership and take Questions from the audience.  Ratliff was first elected to serve in the Texas Senate to represent the First Senatorial District in 1988.  On December 28, 2000 he was chosen by his Senate colleagues to serve as Texas’ 41st Lieutenant Governor succeeding then Lieutenant Governor Perry when Perry assumed the Governor’s office vacated by President George W. Bush.  After serving two years as Lieutenant Governor, he returned to the Senate to serve until his retirement effective January 10, 2004.  In 2005, Lieutenant Governor Ratliff was honored as a recipient of the prestigious Profiles in Courage Award, presented in Boston by the  John F. Kennedy Library.

The Closing Keynote - Henry J. Shea, Associate Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and Richard Juliano, Former Deputy Chief of Staff, Former Illinois Governor George Ryan.  They will discuss “The Consequence of Public Corruption: An Insider’s View”.

This conference is a must for anyone dealing with Ethics and Ethics  Compliance in Texas government today.

* Date:  October 28, 2009

* Location:  Thompson Conference Center

* Cost: $175.00 (general public)

* Cost: $158.00 for UT students/faculty and staff

* Credit hours:  6 CPE and 1.25 Ethics/Participatory CLE (for closing Keynote Address)

To register and see the complete agenda, please visit the website:

http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/profdev/candt/class/384/>http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/profdev/candt/class/384/

Joseph A. Yura, emeritus professor, was inducted as an honorary member into the Adademy of Distinguished Alumni. Although he did not attend UT-Austin, his outstanding service to the department as a faculty member is recognized.

Each of the new inductees received at least one degree from the department and are outstanding in their field, leaders in the community, and have made outstanding contributions to the department. They also serve as excellent role models for students and their careers illustrate the great things that are being accomplished by our alumni around the world.

The Academy of Distinguished Alumni currently has 64 members - a significant honor considering the department has over 10,000 living alumni.

http://fsel.engr.utexas.edu/news/2009/academy.cfm

Center for Transportation Research researchers are working with the City of Austin to test some new initiatives to make biking safer in Austin.

[As part of the study, the city has] set up colored bicycle lanes, to examine just how well they protect cyclists.

“Bike boxes allow cyclists to come up to a cue at a signalized intersection. It makes things safer at intersections for cyclists,” Barrera said.

Researchers are setting those up, too, along with shared bike lanes.

“Do these devices even work? are they beneficial to everyone? that’s the main part of the study,” Barrera said.

UT researchers have already collected video footage from intersections, like this one on 38th St. and Speedway, before the safety devices were installed. Then they’ll examine how special lanes and signage help–if at all.

See Video news story on Fox News 7’s Web site:
http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpp/news/local/102109_New_Bike_Safety_Campaign_Begins

In 2006 Madison, Wisconsin won the distinction from the League of American Bicyclists of being named a gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community–one of only nine U.S. cities to earn this ranking. Any community interested in becoming more bike-friendly can learn from Madison’s example. Read full descriptions of these five tips.

#1: Set ambitious goals and involve the whole community. Miffed that they weren’t able to get a platinum-level ranking from the League (!), Clear says that the city council drafted a report titled “Making Madison the Best Place in the Country to Bicycle” in 2007. In 2008, the city adopted that report’s recommendations.

#2: Treat bike lanes as being as vital as city streets. Madison has 89 miles of bike lanes and paths in a city that’s just over 84 square miles.

#3: Give cyclists places to wait. To help reduce accidents and to improve the visibility of bikers among drivers, the city painted “bike boxes”…where bicyclists can wait for the light to change. Madison is one of only a few cities nationwide that use these.

#4: Remember pedestrians. To protect both bikers and pedestrians, police are now required to report crashes between bicyclists and pedestrians that result in damages of more than $200.

#5: Involve local academia. Madison’s conversion to a biking mecca didn’t happen overnight, says Clear. The process took about 12 years and was spurred largely by students at the University of Wisconsin, which has an annual enrollment of roughly 40,000.