Abstract

The purpose of this study is to showcase the up-to-date development of a Bicycle Lane Engineered Scoring System (BLESS) that will be utilized to map and identify the optimum feasible locations for bicycle lanes. The project was initiated for the City of Tyler, Texas where a Hub-and-Spoke bicycle lane will be designed around the city utilizing the BLESS. The design process is comprised of attentive planning, progressive development and a collective effort by the transportation engineering research team at the University of Texas at Tyler to design an exceptional bicycle lane network. The BLESS consisted of traffic analysis, lane configuration, presence or absence of vehicle parking, presence or absence of night street light, road grade, proximity and presence or absence of existing bicycle lanes. The scoring system was then utilized to design seven bicycle spokes, and seven bicycle spoke-connections, reaching a total distance of 41.7 miles of bicycle lanes. Nonetheless, the design team intends to finish the design map with eleven bicycle spokes, one centralized hub and 8 bicycle spoke-connections, reaching a total distance of 55 miles of bicycle lanes. The presence of bicycle lanes will extend throughout the entire city due to the introduction of new connections between different areas of the city. This development will increase user’s health and safety, while decreasing current traffic congestions. Results indicate that the BLESS is a simple way to compare and analyze roads for bicycle lanes development, since it selects the best road candidates, the bicycle users are going to feel more comfortable using bicycle lanes then riding in a vehicle lane. In order to increase the scoring system efficiency, the remaining progress accounts for the addition of new safety factors such as skid resistance of bicycle lane pavement surfaces.

Date of publication

Spring 5-5-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/843

Committee members

Dr. Souliman, Dr. Gangone, Dr. McGinnis, Dr. Nalbone

Degree

Masters in Civil Engineering

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