NEXT CITY ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK RANKS PEDESTRIAN AND CYCLIST PROJECTS

Next City has released research that takes a first step toward developing standard ways of measuring effectiveness of how well new or improved roads and other facilities safely accommodate people on foot and riding a bike. The title is: Development of an Analytical Framework to Rank Pedestrian and Cyclist Projects: http://bit.ly/1XOWqah. Since the funds available for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure are scarce, developing a uniform way to measure their effectiveness will help local governments determine how best to use those hard-to-come-by funds. The researchers examined seven factors: safety, safety effectiveness, mobility, demand, equity, cost, and qualitative factors. A value is calculated for each factor; the safety effectiveness value is scaled to ensure that crash reduction rates are measured proportionally to improvement costs. Then the values are weighted—with the safety and safety effectiveness values given the greatest weight—and all are summed to produce an overall score. See http://bit.ly/1P4pGCM