Visiting Guest Lecturer - Dr Emily Moylan
Topic: Intersections, Safety and Pedestrian Behaviour
Topic: Intersections, Safety and Pedestrian Behaviour
Visiting Guest Speaker
Dr Emily Moylan
Senior Lecturer
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
University of Sydney
Date: Tuesday, 27 June 2023 |
BIOGRAPHY: Dr Emily Moylan is a Senior Lecturer in Transport at the School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney, where she is leading a research program in the stochasticity of transport system performance. Emily’s research builds on data from many sources including road traffic counters, pedestrian delays, Google Maps API, and transit smart cards to understand the complexity and variability in the way that people move around urban spaces. After completing her PhD in Astrophysics at ANU in 2011, she studied Transport Planning (Master of City Planning) and Engineering (Master of Science) at University of California, Berkeley. From 2014-2018, she was a research associate at the Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation at UNSW Sydney. |
ABSTRACT: Vehicle pedestrian road trauma is a significant cause of concern with one in six road deaths being a pedestrian and about a quarter of pedestrian crashes occurring at intersections in New South Wales, Australia. Historically, intersection design has prioritised use by vehicles which favours signal timings, road alignments or streetscapes that might not work for pedestrians. Indeed, since driver travel time savings often drive the benefit of an intersection or road design, pedestrian safety, comfort and delay are rarely included in infrastructure planning and design decisions. This talk presents preliminary results from a project establishing an Australian evidence base for the relationship between intersection design, delay and safety outcomes. It brings together video data analytics, microsimulation and behavioural modelling to understand how existing designs contribute to crash rates. The insights into how pedestrians and drivers respond to intersection design are applicable to how intersection design might be evaluated in consideration of healthy streets and safe systems approaches. |