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, the research team contends that if cities were to make streets safe for the most vulnerable section of society, we would naturally extend these benefits to all other groups. The team focuses on persons with disabilities (PWDs) as a case and an exemplar. The objective is to understand the micro-trajectories that PWDs take in the urban environment. The team will be relying on PWDs over 18 recruited from two advocacy groups in the Denver Metro Region for this study. The team will design a smartphone application that can passively track movements. The team will conduct one initial short survey to collect details about socio-demographics, socio-economics, and disability type along with opinions on perceived barriers. The team will then collect movement data for two weeks each during the cold and warm months. Seasonal variations are likely to elicit distinctly different travel patterns for PWDs, thus indicating infrastructure limitations. The analyses will rely on identifying variations in spatial-temporal clustering of micro-trajectories. The team will build accessibility indices for PWDs' travel and identify hot spots for design interventions. The practical outcomes of this study are to ascertain actionable items for ADA standards such as locations of bus stops. Finally, regression analyses will aim to identify location and demographic effects for policy interventions.

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

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• 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: 20230731
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• 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