Safe-D: Safety through Disruption

Using Health Behavior Theory and Relative Risk Information to Increase and Inform Use of Alternative Transportation

Abstract

Encouraging the Virginia Tech (VT) community (including student, faculty, and staff) to walk, use the bus, carpool or ride bicycles for alternative transportation to decrease dependency on vehicle use and traffic around a campus and increase overall safety is a goal of the VT Alternative Transportation Department. This project develops an intervention and education program to encourage alternative transportation to, from, and around campus to reduce traffic on campus. In addition, since there is currently no standardized approach for computing the injury rates for non-vehicle roadway users, this project also refines and assesses a methodology for estimating injury rates for pedestrians and bicyclists which was used to inform the developed educational alternative transportation safety course.

Project Highlights

  • First comparative analysis of Texas injury counts from multiple surveillance systems and assessment of the differences in counts and reasons, thereof.
  • Estimation of three different measures of exposures for pedestrians and pedalcyclists stratified by race which is key to evaluating racial inequity in safety outcomes.
  • Injury rate estimated using the three different numerator data – EMS, Trauma Registry and CRIS – and the exposure measures (trip count, distance travelled and trip duration) as denominators for Texas and B-CS MPO to quantify risk.
  • A formative evaluation of alternative transportation was conducted to identify influential factors that impact accessibility and ease of use of alternative transportation, as well as the perception and utilization of alternative transportation in and around Virginia Tech’s campus by faculty/staff and students.
  • Creation of an educational module developed for a university population to provide education on methods, solutions to barriers, and safe use of alternative transportation.

Final Report

05-008 Final Report

EWD & T2 Products

Glenn, L. and Quint, N. (2023, February 22). How To Conduct Research Using Theory to Increase Use of Biking, Walking, Skateboarding etc. around Virginia Tech and Blacksburg. Hokie for a Day, Blacksburg, VA. Presentation available here.

This project developed an online educational program aimed at increasing alternative transportation use and safety. The program contains five units each with a pre-test, recorded presentation, post-test, direct links to resources, and activities. The five educational units included information on public transportation, active transportation, health benefits of alternative transportation, the connection between the environment and transportation, and alternative transportation safety. Alternative Transportation at Virginia Tech. https://canvas.vt.edu/courses/170358

Student Impact Statement(pdf): Six students received funding under this project. This file contains a statement by two doctoral students (Nishita Sinha and Macson Ogieriakhi in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University), two Master’s students (Cat Woodson, Masters student in Urban and Regional Planning and Domenique Villani a Masters Student in Public Health, both from Virginia Tech and Samantha Edwards, an undergraduate student  in Public Health at Virginia Tech) as to the impact this project had on education and workforce development.

An Areawide Non-motorized Exposure Tool that makes it easier for practitioners to obtain and summarize nationwide travel survey data to estimate pedestrian and bicyclist exposure to risk at statewide and MPO area scales. The tool can be accessed at: https://doi.org/10.15787/VTT1/DCR1YU

Presentations/Publications

Sinha, N., Edwards, S., Villani, D., Shipp, E., and Jiles, K. (2023, August 9). Using Health Behavior Theory and Relative Risk Information to Increase and Inform Use of Alternative Transportation. Webinar SafeD Virtual Webinar is available here. PDF of PowerPoint slides from Webinar available here.

Sinha, N., Shipp E.M., Martin, M and Ramezani, M. (2022, October 10-12). Quantifying Alternative Transportation Injury Risk using Health Records and Household Travel Survey Data. 19th International RS5C Conference, Grapevine, Texas, United States.

Final Dataset

The final datasets for this project is located in the Safe-D Collection on the VTTI Dataverse; DOI: 10.15787/VTT1/DCR1YU. This dataset includes an Areawide Non-motorized Exposure Tool that makes it easier for practitioners to obtain and summarize nationwide travel survey data to estimate pedestrian and bicyclist exposure to risk at statewide and MPO area scales.

Research Investigators (PI*)

Laurel Glenn (VT/VTTI)*
Eva Shipp (TTI/TAMU)*
Kathy Hosig (VT/VTTI)
Kristina Jiles
Amber Trueblood (TTI/TAMU)
Marcie Perez (TTI/TAMU)
Michael Martin (TTI/TAMU)
Lingtao Wu (TTI/TAMU)
Nick Quint (VT/VTTI)
Nishita Sinha (Student-TTI/TAMU)
Caitlin Woodson (Student-VT)
Samanta Edwards (Student-VT)
Domenique Villani (Student-VT)

Project Information

Start Date: 2020-10-01
End Date: 2023-07-15
Status: Completed
Grant Number: 69A3551747115
Total Funding: $493,774
Source Organization: Safe-D National UTC
Project Number: 05-008

Safe-D Theme Areas

Big Data Analytics

Transportation as a Service

Safe-D Application Areas

Risk Assessment
Performance Measures
Planning for Safety

More Information

UTC Project Information Form

Sponsor Organization

Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology
University Transportation Centers Program
Department of Transportation
Washington, DC 20590 United States

Performing Organization

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
3500 Transportation Research Plaza
Blacksburg, Virginia 24061
USA

Texas A&M University
Texas A&M Transportation Institute
3135 TAMU
College Station, Texas 77843-3135
USA