Reinhard Clever assists his clients to leverage the extensive experience gained and lessons learned during the last 40 years in European countries on how to integrate alternative modes of transportation into the traffic stream.
As the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions becomes more and more important, alternate modes of transportation will assume an ever increasing role in North America. Researching the interaction between alternative and traditional modes is not possible, or at least not sensible, without drawing on the extensive experience accumulated in foreign countries. An example is the traditional intersection design in the United States.
American urban and interurban highways were optimized for a single mode: cars. They are scarcely able to handle the demands of competing modes either efficiently or safely. Per kilometer walked American pedestrians are about six times more likely to be killed than Dutch pedestrians. Legacy traffic engineering with pedestrian crosswalks always at the widest point of the intersection, traffic lights at the wrong side of the intersection, medians ending right before crosswalks with no protection for bicyclists or pedestrians, etc., show how much work still needs to be done before walking can be become a viable option for short distance trips.
But simply copying European and Asian designs may not yield optimal results. A case in point is High Speed Rail. Downtown-to-downtown connections do not offer a great access advantage in decentralized widely dispersed US metropolitan areas. In North America, outside of the Northeast Corridor, most business trips do not originate or terminate in the central business district and a much more sophisticated approach is likely to be necessary for HSR to be successful.
Airport and Station Accessibility as a Determinant of Mode Choice; University of California, Berkeley, Department of Civil Engineering, Transportation Engineering; Committee: Mark M. Hansen (chair), Samer Madanat, Paul A. Ruud, Phil Spector; ©2006.
Can Lane Discipline Decrease the Sensitivity of Freeway Fatality Rates to Increases in Speed Limits?, Paper presented at the 50th Annual Transportation Research Forum in Portland, Oregon, March 16-18, 2009. Please see page 1, “Comparison of International Road Accident Statistics.”