A comprehensive way of measuring the ease with which pedestrians can use various street environments is being developed by University College London researchers for the Department for Transport.
A series of experiments with volunteers is testing simulated environments at the UCL Centre for Transport Studies’ £1.5M Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory (PAMELA) in north London. Claimed by UCL’s Professor Nick Tyler as the first of its kind in the world, PAMELA uses a purpose-designed, 82m2 computer-driven platform, designed to model environments that pedestrians typically encounter, including footways, bus stops, pedestrian crossings, and transport interchange access and exit routes.
The platform can stimulate steps and slopes, and even allows footways of different surfaces to be compared. A key project for the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council-funded facility is to allow bus operators to identify improvements that could be made to bus stops. Transport for London wants to use PAMELA findings on crossing times to make traffic management schemes more friendly to all road-users. Better-designed stops could mean substantial time savings over typical route lengths. Easier horizontal and vertical gaps for people boarding and alighting, and wider use of Kassel kerb profiles, could cut vehicle dwell times by between 30% and 50%, Tyler argues.
Other PAMELA research is focusing on how pedestrians, particularly the elderly and those with disabilities, move around transport interchanges, and how best they can evacuate these in an emergency. Tyler expects full results of the current research, to be published later in the year, to provide vital information for bus manufacturers and operators and local authorities. ‘There is data on how people board buses, but not enough on how they leave them.’
He is currently looking for £15M of funding to expand PAMELA into a 3,000m2 Dynamic Access and Vehicle Interior Design (DAVID) facility. A key element would be a mocked-up bus interior which would monitor the effect on passengers of bus manoeuvres such as cornering, and indicate best positions for safety rails and grabs. ‘Vehicle simulators are typically designed round drivers’, he said. ‘With this one, bus drivers can experience how their driving affects passengers.’
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