Learning from the Travel Experiences of Persons with Disabilities: Investigating Navigation Challenges Posed by Infrastructure

Vision Zero has captured the imagination of policy makers, arguably led by a large volume of research in the last two decades that focuses on bicycling and pedestrian travel. Yet most streets in the US remain inhospitable to sustainable transportation modes. For this project, we contend that if cities were to make streets safe for the most vulnerable section of our society, we would naturally extend these benefits to all other groups. We focus on people with disabilities for this project. Our objective is to understand the average daily travel of people with disabilities in the urban environment. We rely on people with disabilities over 18 years of age, recruited from several advocacy groups in the Denver Metro Region for this study. We conduct in-depth interviews with the purposive sample to learn more about opinions on barriers to daily travel. We analyze the interview corpus using thematic content identification. The practical outcomes of our study are to identify actionable items for ADA standards related to sidewalks, crosswalks, bus stops, and other basic infrastructure.

• Record URL:
  https://www.mountain-plains.org/research/details.php?id=511

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $120000.02
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747108

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Mountain-Plains Consortium

  North Dakota State University
  Fargo, ND  United States  58108
• Project Managers:

  Tolliver, Denver

• Performing Organizations:

  Dept. of Civil Engineering

  University of Colorado Denver
  Denver, CO  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Shirgaokar, Manish

  Marshall, Wesley

• Start Date: 20200218
• Expected Completion Date: 20240731
• Actual Completion Date: 20240412
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program
• Source Data: MPC-614

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Infrastructure; Mobile applications; Persons with disabilities; Regression analysis; Smartphones; Spatial analysis; Surveys; Travel behavior; Urban areas
• Geographic Terms: Denver Metropolitan Area
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Safety and Human Factors; Society; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01732550
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Mountain-Plains Consortium
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747108
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Mar 1 2020 7:33PM