Getting caught in a crosswalk while the timer drops to zero is a common community problem with serious, often overlooked ramifications. For communities with busy roadways like Milwaukee, these crosswalk timers can be a gateway or a barrier to pedestrian safety, vehicular traffic flow and even individuals’ ability to connect and engage comfortably with their community.
That is what motivates Dr. Maggie McNamara and her student researchers to take a closer look at how these timers are serving pedestrians.
McNamara, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at Marquette, is collaborating with the UW-Madison Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) lab to inform future crosswalk design standards.
To collect this data, McNamara has turned to Marquette’s own urban campus environment for valuable data. The many crosswalks on Marquette’s campus serve thousands of students, faculty, staff and community members of differing ages and abilities, making for a robust and easy-to-access dataset.
McNamara is supported by Yinka Benjamin Oluwadiya, a graduate student specializing in transportation engineering, and Andrew Ozers, an undergraduate construction engineering major. Over the past few months, this team has placed subtle camera boxes on a few crosswalks on campus and additional sites elsewhere in Milwaukee.
Back in the lab, the team is analyzing the walking speed of pedestrians to better inform these important countdown calculations. In addition to walking speed, the team also looks for additional insights on estimated age of pedestrians and if the pedestrians are looking at a smartphone or wearing headphones.
“Pedestrians are often an afterthought in signal timing calculations – the priority is moving vehicles through the intersection with minimal delay,” says McNamara. “It’s vital to have accurate walking speed data that reflects the breadth of human experience and the reality of how we walk today in order to provide enough time for everyone to cross the road safely.”
For Oluwadiya, participation in the project is helping to build his expertise in transportation engineering as a graduate student. “This project has been instrumental in bridging the gap between classroom learning and practical application, preparing me for a career dedicated to improving urban infrastructure and community well-being,” says Oluwadiya.
For Ozers, this project has provided a valuable hands-on learning experience and a glimpse at future careers.
“When I took Dr. McNamara’s Transportation Engineering course, we learned all the vocabulary, equations, and diagrams related to signalized intersections and road design, but now I get to apply it to a real problem in an urban setting,” says Ozers. “This project has also helped me to experience what a transportation engineer would do in a job.”
In the work ahead, McNamara and collaborators aim to publish updated data and insights that can help inform decision makers locally and across the United States.
