Biking on Grounds: Engineering
As the engineering design team, the principle task for completion dealt with the creation of a tangible solution for improving cycling on grounds. Multiple avenues were explored in an effort to determine which needs were most pressing for the community. The identified areas of need included concerns associated with cycling safety due to unregulated interactions with pedestrians and motor vehicles at both intersections and along roadways throughout campus. Concerns with deficient bike lane access and parking facilities were also identified as strong deterrents for biking.
Biking on Grounds, Engineering, University of Virginia, transportation, Ted Kin Chen, Ryan Shaw, David Sherdil, Samuel White
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Biking on Grounds: Engineering

Transportation_BicycleEngineering (click PDF)

Fall 2011

Team members: Ted Kin Chen, Ryan Shaw, David Sherdil, Samuel White

As the engineering design team, the principle task for completion dealt with the creation of a tangible solution for improving cycling on grounds. Multiple avenues were explored in an effort to determine which needs were most pressing for the community. The identified areas of need included concerns associated with cycling safety due to unregulated interactions with pedestrians and motor vehicles at both intersections and along roadways throughout campus. Concerns with deficient bike lane access and parking facilities were also identified as strong deterrents for biking.

In reviewing the potential solutions for each of these four areas of improvement, it was determined that the most significant impact could be made by addressing the deficiency in parking space. Adding more bike lanes to city and campus streets would have been financially impossible and possessed major concerns with determining exactly who owns and operates each section of road. Any effort associated with improving pedestrian or motorist behavior would have been mostly focused on education and advertisement efforts, both of which are being addressed by alternate groups within the larger project scope. Therefore the engineering design was focused on collecting data and making recommendations for campus parking.

With a principle focus on the McCormick Road corridor running from Clark Hall to Observatory Hill, data was collected from around grounds in an effort to determine areas requiring additional or improved bike parking facilities. Two areas along McCormick Road, Wilsdorf Hall and the Chemistry Bus Stop, were identified as needed additional capacity in order to prevent overcrowding, with a recommended increase of 10 and 4 spaces respectively. Observatory Hill Dining Hall warranted the largest recommendation for capacity increase with 30 spaces. It should be noted that Newcomb Dining Hall was intentionally omitted from the study due to unknown confounding effects presented by the current construction projects in the vicinity. The recommended increases in capacity call for the use of “U” shaped racks that allow for the parking of two bikes per installed system. This style of parking was preferred over linear rack designs because of its flexibility of application geometry and its increased level of bicycle protection and improved ease of use. Consideration was also given to the potential implementation of long term (i.e. overnight) storage for persons desiring to leave their bikes on grounds while using alternative means of transportation for entering and leaving the campus area.

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