Walking and biking have been the latest subject of interest for University of Idaho
transportation research.
Recently, the UI Transportation Technology Center received a research grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The University of Idaho National Institute for Advanced Transportation Technology (NIATT) received the grant in order to fund research programs to develop better methods of
transportation.
“We are trying to develop tools and technology that improve planning for all modes of transportation but especially walking and bicycling,” said Mike Lowry, assistant professor of civil engineering.
The $570,000 grant is only a portion of the $3.4 million grant given to the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans) — the region 10 consortium that includes Alaska, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. There are a total of 10 regions divided by the USDOT. PacTrans is led by the University of Washington’s Regional University Transportation Center.
“We partner with them on a lot of different research … how are we going to support the region, the State Department of Transportation and essentially … cities, because Alaska and Oregon are also in this so we had to show them that we were going to do a good job and choose good projects,” said Karen De Braven, NIATT director and UI mechanical
engineering professor.
The grant is a two-year program but is not guaranteed for both years. In order to initially receive the grant last year, NIATT wrote a proposal to the USDOT explaining how the money would be spent on research and supporting transportation
in the region.
Reinstatement of the grant means the USDOT approved how NIATT made use of funds last year. Confirmation of reinstating the grant this year was given to the institute last summer though funds were not received until early
this semester.
Currently, Lowry is working on a project called “Data Collection and Spatial Interpolation of Bicycle and Pedestrian Data” that is supported by national funding.
“Cities and state departments of transportation struggle to effectively collect and use bicycle and pedestrian data,” Lowry said. “This project will evaluate existing and proposed technologies for automatically counting bicycle and pedestrian volumes, develop strateies to in tegrate automated and manual count programs, and to create avdvanced methods to spatially interpolate observed data across a study area for travel demand
forecasting.”
The project tests three new technologies to count bicyclists and pedestrians. One senses pressure intensity from either a car, bike or pedestrian via a pressure sensitive tube. Existing tubes are unable to detect what object has gone over it.
“We have different modes of transportation that are kind of using the same areas, like downtown Moscow, we’ve got bikes, people walking around, cars, so how do we plan it and keep it safe?” De Braven said. “Well, part of the planning process is to figure out how much that we
have of each.”
The second technology being tested is a Bluetooth sensor that detects walking or biking pedestrians with an enabled Bluetooth device in hand.
“Research shows that only about 1 percent of people passing a given location have a bluetooth device enabled, but that can still provide enough information to make some statistical inferences about the number of people passing the location,” Lowry said.
The third technology being tested uses Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect to detect movement. The technology is being used to adapt the program to detect speed and size. Current video technology is
unable to do so.
“The point of the project is to help engineers and planners do better transportation planning for walking and bicycling so that citizens can have more viable transportation choices,”
Lowry said.
As for students, the funding helps NIATT develop modules to educate students on
transportation technology.
“We have an educational component where we have professors working on developing transportation curriculum,”
Den Braven said.
The grant also helps fund the Clean Snowmobile Challenge Team, which challenges UI engineering students to build more efficient, low emission snowmobiles. Other NIATT projects supported by the grant include adapting traffic signals for physically impaired pedestrians, investigating methods to reduce crash risks on rural highways and educating teen drivers about the dangers of distracted driving.