Level of Traffic Stress and Bike Access Evaluation for Cook County, IL

Principal Investigator(s):

Shirley Shiqin Liu, Researcher, Center for Transportation Studies

Co-Investigators:

  • Eric Lind, AO Director, Center for Transportation Studies
  • Andrew Owen, Lead Researcher, Accessibility Observatory, Center for Transportation Studies

Project summary:

Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress (LTS) is a useful framework for understanding where cyclists may prefer to ride, or avoid, within urban environments. Accessibility is a measure of the ease of reaching valued destinations, within a certain amount of cost (often time), using real-world transportation networks. Modeling how bicyclists make routing decisions allows more precise and practical metrics of bicycle access to destinations. This project implemented the LTS framework to describe the cycling network and develop a tool for evaluating bike access using open source software for Cook County Department of Transportation and Highways in Illinois. The task deliverables included 1) OpenStreetMap network extract with LTS tagging for Cook County, IL, and 2) BikeAccess Tool with custom R5 routing engine modification to support barrier-informed origin and destination connection. The LTS network dataset and BikeAccess tool will be used by the county to identify and evaluate opportunities to expand off-street bike paths and comfortable on-street bikeways into a fully connected system.

Sponsor(s):

Project details: