Automobile-Oriented or Complete Street? Pedestrian and Bicycle Level of Service in the New Multimodal Paradigm

In recent years, the transportation profession has started shifting away from considering only the automobile mode of travel when designing urban streets. The new emphasis is on designs that accommodate all users and make what was once an automobile-oriented street into a complete street. Recognizing this growing trend, NCHRP funded a project to develop a multimodal level of service (LOS) methodology for inclusion in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). This new chapter in the HCM will make it possible to easily compare various designs to determine the one that provides the greatest LOS to all users. But what exactly are the most important criteria for designing a complete street? This research seeks to answer part of this question by exploring various cross-section layouts and how they affect the LOS scores of two of the four modes (bicycle and pedestrian) in the new methodology. Four right-of-way (ROW) widths were selected to provide a broad spectrum of possible ROWs from a small collector to a large arterial. Within each of these four widths, an automobile-oriented design is compared with a complete street design. The relationship between each of the bicycle and pedestrian LOS scores is then explored, along with the impact the complete street design has on the automobile throughput.

• Record URL:
  https://doi.org/10.3141/2257-09
• Summary URL:
  http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Automobile-Oriented+or+Complete+Street%3f+Pedestrian+and+Bicycle+Level+of+Service+in+the+New+Multimodal+Paradigm&author=A.+Elias&publication_year=2011
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/166654.aspx
• Authors:
  • Elias, Aaron
• Publication Date: 2011

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: pp 80-86
• Monograph Title: Highway Capacity and Quality of Service 2011
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
  • Issue Number: 2257
  • Publisher: Transportation Research Board
  • ISSN: 0361-1981

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Arterial highways; Bicycles; Complete streets; Highway design; Layout; Level of service; Pedestrians; Right of way (Land); Streets; Width
• Identifier Terms: Highway Capacity Manual 2010
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; I20: Design and Planning of Transport Infrastructure; I73: Traffic Control;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01337935
• Record Type: Publication
• ISBN: 9780309222938
• Report/Paper Numbers: 11-1538
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 27 2011 7:21AM