Road safety. Is the message too harsh?

Last week I attended the 8th Australian Road Engineering and Maintenance conference in Melbourne. It was a very interesting conference with two different streams: Road Engineering and Road Maintenance. My interest was mainly with the Road Engineering papers and presentations which were mostly about road safety and street/urban design.

There were presentations about new devices that can enhance road safety like the BarrierGuard steel road safety barrier by Boylan Group that was presented in a crash demonstration at Sundown racecourse. 

Mike Dreznes, Executive Vice President of the International Road Federation presented a paper on forgiving highways using some very graphic images of crash victims. I must say that I couldn't keep my eyes in his presentation as these images were too disturbing for me. This is the second time that such images are used at a conference that I attend, in a very short time. Last time at AITPM conference in Sydney Ron Delezio presented crying, his own hard to believe family drama . This was an even more powerful and very emotional presentation. 

I always thought that such harsh images and information campaigns based on them don't have much success influencing people behavior because people tend to disassociate from them. The human brain tends as a protection measure to think that such crashes and injuries will not happen to me because I am different than the person in this campaign. I am younger or older, I don't drive or I don't walk, I have a better car, I don't drive at that time of the day or any other excuse. A colleague from ARRB mentioned that there is research that shows that such messages have a good outcome in some countries like Australia and Ireland but not that good in other countries like England. 

Personally, I prefer a different approach in road safety campaigns. More clever, indirect messages that don't make the viewer turn his/her head the other way. Campaigns like this one for drinking and driving:

or this very clever road side billboard that changes when it's raining.

The use of positive images seems to me a more effective way to promote road safety. Role models for young people like Karl Lagerfeld or Michael Schumacher are used to reach different target audiences hence they take different approaches.

 

But the reality is that unless we start promoting sustainable transport, more safe modes of transport like walking and cycling, road crashes would be high resulting in deaths and serious injuries and bringing much grief to people. 

Free public transport. Efficient and fun.

More and more cities choose to provide some short of free public transport service. Just yesterday we went on a night trip on our own City Hopper. It is a free ferry service running every 30 minutes from early in the morning until midnight along the central part of the Brisbane river. All this time in Brisbane I hadn't had the chance to see the city from this point of view and I have to say that I found out that it is an amazing view. Especially passing under the Story Bridge with the lights on and looking at the high rise buildings in front, is one of the best views of the city.

The online mobility management toolbox goes on a ride.

The Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management (AITPM) is an organization that aims mainly to promote the positive aspects of traffic & transport planning and management for the benefit of the whole community and to increase members' knowledge within the field. Since I came to Australia, more than a year ago, and being member of The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE – ΣΕΣ), I became also member of AITPM.

 

The AITPM 2012 annual national conference was held in Sydney from 9 to 12 October at a fantastic venue Luna Park and it was a great honour for me to be selected to present my work on the on line mobility management toolbox.

Presentation Part 1

 Presentation Part 2: Conclusions

Camera Director: Pam Andritsakis.(thank you Pam).

Overall it was a great conference with many very interesting papers presented. I found most interesting the presentations on alternative and sustainable modes of travel like walking and cycling. In the same session as me, there were two colleagues that I think they are very good ambassadors of Brisbane transport professionals. Rachel Smith was passionate as always, suggesting that we should trial the closure of some CBD streets for a couple of hours at lunchtimes to experiment with giving pedestrians priority and creating new economic opportunities. Michael Roth  commented on ways that we can convince more drivers to drive ecologically improving this way both their environmental impact and their weekly spending on fuel.  Both presentations were within the philosophy of mobility management and sustainable mobility. 

On the second day of the conference there were also quite interesting presentations and at times it was difficult to choose between the two different sessions taking place in different halls. Matthew Harridge presented the work on a carpooling system implemented at Tally Ho Business Centre, Victoria. Again carpooling is a solution that can reduce congestion and air pollution in cities with intense problems as Melbourne. Matt Tilly's work on Improving the walkability of Brisbane's City Centre was also very interesting. This work on the Brisbane City Centre Active Transport Study was part of the new Brisbane City Council Master Plan.

The last day of the conference I participated in the official multi modal tour of Sydney. Even though the weather that day was not so good the participants had a chance to learn about the new transport projects that are planned for North and West Sydney. But Sydney's transportation system is a very interesting story of it's own and something tells me that in the near future I will have the chance to share it.

Pedestrian signals countdown timers. Time to move on.

Just a few weeks ago Brisbane City Council installed pedestrian signal countdown timers at five CBD sites for a trial period until 26 October 2012.

 Adelaide Street and Edward Street

• Adelaide Street and Albert Street pedestrian crossing
• Eagle Street and Wharf Street and Queen Street
• George Street at Queen Street pedestrian crossing
• Charlotte Street and Edward Street

All these intersections are located in Brisbane's CBD and have a high number of pedestrians using them. 

The countdown works during the Flashing Don’t Walk interval. This is a time between the Green Man and the Red Man when the Red Man is flashing.  That interval is not used in Greece and most European countries. Under Australian and Queensland road rules (231) the pedestrian is not allowed to start crossing during the Flashing Don’t Walk interval. 

The operation of the countdown timers during the flashing red interval raised a lot of questions and especially whether this actually results to pedestrians crossing illegally. This same choice was made in a similar trial case in Sydney in 2010 where the specific choice was made simply because this type of countdown was most compatible with adaptive traffic control, used in Sydney (SCATS traffic control). I don't know exactly why the same choice was made in Brisbane but I guess that the fact that SCATS is also used here, played some role in this choice.

The basic conclusions of the Sydney trial research were:

• Safety: There was no net change in pedestrian safety–while late starters were more successful finishing crossing (prior to the start of the SDW interval) where PCTs were installed, the late starters were offset by a reduction in pedestrians starting during the Walk interval.
• Compliance: The level of compliance by pedestrians appears to have decreased at wider crossings where PCTs were installed. There was an increase in late starters that started crossing during the FDW interval, although non-compliant vehicles may have contributed tothis effect.
• Amenity: Results suggested that pedestrian amenity may have been improved due to the reduction in the number of pedestrians required to wait until the next Walk interval to cross.

Probably the results of the trial period in Brisbane would not be much different and this may result in Brisbane CC not going through with the full programmed installation.

But the evolution for pedestrian traffic in cities and especially in the CBD areas has just started. And traffic signal countdown timers is only a small part of it. The plethora of different solutions for counters across the world is amazing. There are even some that are animated as this one in Auckland.

But the real issue is to prioritize pedestrian traffic over to vehicle traffic in the CBD areas. After all, the research has shown that after a period of 30 to 45 seconds of waiting, pedestrians become more risky, impatient and were more likely to cross whenever they could regardless of the pedestrian signal displays.

So we have to start thinking for pedestrian traffic similarly to how we think for cars when we programming traffic signal operations. How about green waves for pedestrians across roads linking major railway or metro stations to the core of CBD for example? Or even restricting vehicle turning movements at intersections during pedestrian traffic peak hours. We have to be more brave and pilot projects and trial periods are tools that allow us to.

Car free day

 Last Saturday, 22 September 2012 was the world car-free day. People, communities, cities and countries from around the world organise events to celebrate and promote sustainable mobility.

Gratz, Austria

 While the idea of restricting car access to specific streets or parts of the city even for just a few hours of a single day per year is pretty old, it was back at 1994 that a formal world day started to be organised. In 2000 the European Commission adopted the idea and funded the whole project under the title “In town without my car”. The campaign was a huge success not only in Europe but also in other countries. Since 2002 cities in Europe celebrate the “European Mobility Week” an annual event in September around the "In town without my car!" day. By 2008 more than 2100 local governments from 39 countries participated either in the single day celebration or the whole mobility week.

The first Australian Car Free Day was held in the City of Fremantle on 29 November 2000. Fremantle tried again on 2001 and 2002 organising the “Shed your car day”. Other cities in Australia tried to organise similar events but without coordination amongst them and not much success.

Pedestrians, bicycles, public transit and other forms of sustainable transportation are encouraged on these days. People have tolerated too long congestion, air pollution and all other side effects of car traffic in the cities.

As the theme and logo of this year’s European Mobility Week says “Do the right mix”.

At the same time that neoliberal policies and austerity measures deepen the economic crisis in Europe, 

extending it into a social crisis, there are still a few lessons that we can learn from their practices towards a new culture in urban mobility.

Olympic Games traffic

I am watching the Olympic Games 2012  opening ceremony and as always my mind goes to transport and traffic. 

The Games being such a huge event, involving thousands of participating athletes, coaches and spectators are such a great challenge for the transportation planners and traffic engineers of each hosting city. 

Even in the hosting city selection procedure, transport and traffic is the second most important aspect of the candidate cities’ proposal after venues. Cities are struggling to persuade the “immortals” that they can manage traffic during the Olympic games in a way that not only will be effective but also sustainable. The games provide the opportunity for the cities to build new transportation system like the Athens Metro and tram. 

But even big transport infrastructure projects like public transportation systems and construction of new motorways and arterials are not enough to ensure that athletes would not need two or three hours of travel to get to their Olympic venue. Transport planning, traffic management and mobility management plays a big role in this task. After all, transportation network capacity is not designed to support all this additional demand for travel. 

One of the traffic management measures used, is sending a significant percentage of the Olympic city’s residents away from the city or having them stay at home. Usually this is achieved by giving civil servants mandatory leave and generally by making it so much more difficult for people to travel to their usual every day destination, so they will prefer to go on holidays or stay home. Again Athens was an example for this with so many Athenians spending their days during the Olympic Games in the islands.

The objective is to enable athletes and officials to get to their events on time. This is accomplished by installing Olympic lanes. Roads or traffic lanes reserved for accredited Games vehicles – athletes, officials and of course sponsors – as well as emergency vehicles. In London there are 30 miles of Olympic Lanes installed mainly on some of the city’s main arterial roads, marked by white Olympic rings painted on to the road. 

No one else is allowed in these lanes, not even black taxis or bicycles and this raises discomfort, protests and even extreme police actions that don't exactly promote the Olympic spirit.  

Trying to achieve optimum traffic management is not an easy task as some of London’s biggest traffic engineering gaffes show. 

Olympic Games have blown out of proportion during the last decades thanks to the commercialization spirit. The sponsors and the often greedy national Olympic committees push to include more sports and more athletes to the Olympic Games and finally cities that host the games do not benefit from them overall.At least it seems that they benefit from some improvement to their transport systems and the added experience in mobility management.

Traffic and wildlife

A few days ago we went with the kids at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary to visit this great place and view up close Queensland wildlife. 

tree kangaroo

cassowary

And when we were admiring the tree kangaroos and the cassowary  I remembered how impressed I was when I first saw the wildlife warning signs.

kangaroo - camel -cassowary - wild horse - koala - wombat

And there are also the "care for our wildlife" information signs.

echidna - tree kangaroo - duck - small bird - possum - lizard

In Greece there is only one wildlife sign depicting a deer and it is representative of all wildlife animals even though there are only a few deers left; some in Mount Parnitha near Athens and more in Mount Rodopi near my former hometown Kavala. 

 

There is also a warning sign with a cow on it representing all livestock animals. 

This is similar to the livestock warning sign in QLD.

Unfortunately there is no sign depicting a bear which is the animal more endangered by road traffic in Greece. Just yesterday two young brown bears were killed in the road near Kastoria another northern Greek city that I love and have family at. 

Wildlife protection is one of the most important sectors in environmental protection and sustainable development. Sustainable mobility can play a big part in this cause not only by putting up signs to warn drivers for the presence of wildlife but mainly through planning and design of infrastructure that does not invade wildlife habitat and protects these sensitive ecosystems from collateral damage.

BRT or LRT? Busway or Light Rail?

Few days ago I went back to the Gold Coast for a technical seminar on the new Light Rail Project that is now under construction there. The stage one of the project will cost $ 1 billion to deliver a 13 km route between the Gold Coast University Hospital and Broadbeach. This new public transportation system will commence operations in 2014 well ahead of the Commonwealth Games that Gold Coast will host in 2018. The system in this first stage will consist of 14 trams and 16 stations and it is expected to move 50,000 passengers a day with a capacity to cater for up to 75,000 passengers a day.

The trams are constructed by Bombardier and are 43.5 metres long, 2.65 metres wide and can travel at speeds up to 70 km/h. The trams are the latest generation of FLEXITY 2 Light Rail Vehicles that are used in Croydon and Docklands in London, Nottingham and Manchester, Blackpool and Lancashire. The unique feature for the Gold Coast trams will be of course the Surfboard racks.

This new system will be the first light rail system in Queensland. Previous attempts to propose planning and construction of such a system in Queensland’s capital city Brisbane were unsuccessful. Public spending in transportation is directed to the bus system like the CityGlider and CityCats. 

In the traffic engineering – transportation planning community there is a big and long standing debate on the benefits of light rail systems against bus rapid transit systems. The BRT or busway as they are called in Australia is at the moment the preferred choice in Brisbane. Personally I am not sure that there is a clearly superior system between the two. Probably it depends on the urban environment and the characteristics that those systems are to be designed and operate. And while busways are usually less expensive to implement and more flexible and adaptive to changes, the light rail systems give the city a world class image lift and support residential and commercial development along its stations.  

After all, the way busways work in Brisbane, some times they give the impression that we do have a light rail.

  

Charming cycling? Not in a helmet!

Riding a bicycle is one of the most sustainable mobility choices. Cities and people can greatly benefit, if they can raise the mode share of cycling. Australia in general and Brisbane specifically has a very small bike share even thought the last few years a lot of effort has been put in increasing bicycle use. You can see all the bikeways  and shared paths on Brisbane in the maps that provide information on on-road and off-road bicycle lanes, bike shelters and cyclepods to make your ride or walk safer and more pleasant.

Yesterday there was a very interesting event in Brisbane – which unfortunately I was not able to take part. Brisbane Bike Over Speed. Cyclists in their normal cloths, their work outfit or their best suits cycled through the City and South Bank just to make the point that cycling is not only for the “hardcore - lycra wearing – Tour De France looking” cyclists. See the video of their playful ride:

Some of them were riding CityCycle bikes. CityCycle is a very good initiative that can help raise bicycle use across the city. When I first saw the yellow bikes, similar to those in Paris and in Dublin, I thought: Way to go Brisbane. The next couple of days I subscribed to City Cycle and now I use the yellow bikes regularly. That is, I try to use them every day but it seems that quite a few days I am not able to do so because I can not find a bicycle with a helmet in the bike rack. That is one of the biggest reasons that the overall daily trips of CityCyle remain so low. Dublin Councillor Andrew Montague shares his experience about the bike share system in Dublin and compares it to the one in Melbourne which is so similar to CityCycle in Brisbane. The video is from MikeRubbo artist devoted in promoting "the beauty of the body of the bike".

And then browsing about cycling and the city I found this TEDx video of   Mikael Colville-Andersen, filmmaker, photographer and urban mobility expert from Copenhangen, Denmark explaining with lots of research and data “Why We Shouldn’t Bike with a Helmet”. Interesting comments, especially those concerning Australia.

Pasadeiras

Just found a nice piece of traffic artwork by a Portuguese advertising agency Draft FCB Lisbon.
It is pedestrian (zebra) crossing painted in a street in Lisbon, Portugal as part of a "safe street week" campaign  in cooperation with The Association of Self-Mobilized Citizens ACA-M.

Source: http://cargocollective.com/filipegraca/Passadeiras-ACAM

The pedestrian crossing stripes consisted of names of pedestrians killed by cars.

Source: http://cargocollective.com/filipegraca/Passadeiras-ACAM

In both ends of the crossing is is written that 1/4 of all victims in car accidents are pedestrians.

I am sure that a lot of questions are raised regarding the actual safety of this pedestrian crossing as people may stop in the middle of the road to read the names but reports from Portugal say that no accident happened there since it was installed.

And this zebra crossing is not the only piece of pedestrian crossing artwork. Everyone knows the famous zebra crossing on Abbey Road, London that made the cover of The Beatles Abbey Road album.

Abbey Road studios that was the place that The  Beatles recorded that album has now a web camera pointed on that crossing. Check it out to see tourists reproducing the famous cover photo.

Other famous crossings that can be found around the world and around Internet:

 Salzburg, Austria.

South Africa.

Qujiang District, Xi'an, China

 Canada.

April Fools’ Day traffic.

Although this is not one of my favourite days of the year I must admit that I found rather funny and amusing the following stories with urban traffic themes.

The first one comes from Philadelphia USA. Watch the Mayor announcing the E-lane initiative where pedestrians can walk and use their mobile at the same time safely.

The second one comes from Vancouver Canada where Vancouver Observer online newspaper announces the province's new mandatory pedestrian helmet law. This one if it was on Brisbane Times it would be more believable since Australia has already the mandatory cyclist law.
 

The first really interesting April fools’ day story about traffic and transportation that made world headlines was the Copenhagen’s new subway. It looked as if one of its cars had an accident, and had broken through and surfaced on the square in front of the town hall.

 

April Fools ’ Day presents a great opportunity to draw peoples attention to sustainable mobility and humour is quite an effective way to reach behavioural change.

Parking for disabled

At my work I try to do my best to help disabled people find a parking space that suits them in different parts of the city. Their problems are very well presented in this awarded short film from Greece :

My congratulations to the director Stamos Tsamis.

One sign I haven't found in Australia

The above sign is quite common in Europe. Most of the European countries have it and in Greece the official name translates to “Start of residential area marked as traffic calm”. 

In Netherlands is called “woonerf” which is the most used international term from the Dutch words wonen 'reside' + erf 'premises, ground'.

Historically this scheme originates from Holland. The Dutch government developed traffic regulations for woonerfs in 1976, though the first woonerf was built in the city of Delft a decade earlier.

In the UK they have the “Home Zone” sign which is much similar. 

In Australia we have the 10 Km Shared Zone which is a quite different in colours. 

 Maybe we need to rethink about not only the sign design but the sign usage as well.

Commuting from Gold Coast to Brisbane - Part 2. What people do?

My last post was about my impressions of commuting by train from Gold Coast to Brisbane. It is indeed very slow and uncomfortable and that is why the majority of people do not use it. But there is a big number of people living in the Gold Coast and working in Brisbane and a not so big but still significant number of people commuting the other way. So what all these people do every day?

Well I suppose for the people living in Brisbane and working in Gold Coast is fairly easy. They drive each day through the M1 Motorway and find a relatively easy and cheap parking spot in Gold Coast.

But how about people from Gold Coast working in Brisbane? Here is what they do:

First option: They drive to Brisbane but not to the CBD because of the very expensive parking. Instead they drive just outside the limits of the traffic control areas and try to find a free on street parking space.

The most popular areas for this are: Lower West End and Highgate Hill, Buranda, Stones Corner, Norman Park, Coorparoo.

Second option: They drive to one of the many park and ride spaces that Citytrain provides in the suburbs and then take the train. Popular Southeast stations for park’n’ride:

Fairfeild, Yeronga, Yeerongpilly, Moorooka and some Northeast stations like Buranda, Coorparoo and Norman Park.

Third option: They drive to different inner suburbs and then park illegally wherever they think they have better chances of not getting fined.

Of course there are quite a few other options that people follow in order to move from their place of living to the place of work.

But of course all these options are not viable sustainable transportation. They create lots of troubles to people on those Brisbane suburbs and at the end of the day they don’t save that much time and money for commuters.

Commuting by train Gold Coast to Brisbane. Captain Slow is on the driver’s seat

Having to commute every day from Gold Coast to Brisbane I experience first hand the good and the bad of commuting by train. First let me give you some useful data:

The distance from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane CBD is around 77 kilometres and driving through the M1 motorway or as they call it Pacific motorway will take you less than an hour. That is even in peek hours but not when you run onto a road accident that is quite common in M1 motorway which is very heavy on traffic and is considered one of the most dangerous highways in Australia regarding accidents. In those cases total travel time might be as long as two and a half hours.  Plus if you go by car in Brisbane city centre then you have to pay a small fortune every month for parking.

So this is a great opportunity to develop the  sustainable and environmental friendly solution of train commuting. But unfortunately train is not that popular in South East Queensland. And if this is not the case for the people living here, it certainly is the case for the decision makers. And let me explain this:

The rail line that connects Gold Coast (in general and not Surfers Paradise) with Brisbane City Centre is almost 90 kilometres long making a journey from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane a total of one hour and a half.

  That is about 20 minutes by car to Nerang Station -where fortunately there is a free commuter parking- and then 70 minutes from there to Central Station in Brisbane. If we consider the rail distance from Nerang Station to Brisbane Central Station is 75,9 kilometres, that makes the average train speed 65 kilometres per hour. Did you say slow? Actually it is slow,  regarding all train standards and not just highspeed rail. 

But I am afraid that is not the only drawback keeping commuters away from the Gold Coast train. The train is not comfortable at all; The seats are like the ones that you expect from a metro train and not from a suburban train not to mention an intercity train. Certainly if you want to catch an early morning snooze or a late afternoon nap then you must do that on a sitting straight position with the fear of banging your head somewhere.

"Ok I can not sleep but can I use this time to work in my laptop?"  Bad luck again. No tables at all and not enough space to have it even on your lap. 

"How about wireless internet connection?" Only a small number of the trains have that and not in every car. And when you are lucky enough to be in one of those then there is a time limit and a limit in what you can access. So, no youtube videos or other streaming media.

But even you are someone that does not care for all this and you just enjoy reading a good book during trip time then you should take care where you board the train. Almost all trains during the peak hours run full so for the most part of the trip there are a lot of standing passengers. Add to that that the trip frequency is not good having only 3 trains from Gold Coast between 7-8 am and only 5 trains between 7-9 am. 

In one of my next posts I will write about what people commuting from Gold Coast to Brisbane do and what they can do with a little help from state government and the two city councils.