The work is concerned with the measurement and prediction of the environmental effects of traffic in urban situations, with a view to contributing to the development of theory and the provision of techniques in transportation planning which will allow such effects to be taken into account explicitly in the evaluation of transport proposals and projects. Its main emphasis has been on the problems of streets typical of urban areas as opposed to urban motorways on which most research has heretofore concentrated. The study has focused attention on the environmental effects measurable at the kerbside and involved the review and development of traffic and built form related models of traffic noise, pedestrian delay and atmospheric pollution. The issues of vibration, pedestrian risk and visual appearance have also been examined. The work has not only been concerned with 'objective' measures of environmental impact but also with 'subjective response' and the results of testing a series of hypotheses based psychometric approaches to stimulus/response issues are reported. The research methodology for the development of the 'objective' models was based on the regression of observed variables on simultaneously measured independent variables. The 'subjective' aspects of the study were based on a survey of pedestrian response at the kerbside. Two direct methods of measuring pedestrian annoyance were used - cross modality matching and magnitude estimation. The results of the 'objective' model development work produced a, traffic noise model in terms of L10 for non free flow conditions with a standard error of 1.4dB(A) which is approximately half that found in models to date. Extremely good fits for pedestrian delay were found with models based on the adaptation of models for 'free flow' conditions. Less progress has been made in the prediction of pedestrian response. While, in some cases, very highly significant correlations were observed, the wide range of responses relative to the range of the traffic variables on the road network made it impossible to define the correct form of the relationship between the responses and the traffic. However, in the cases where the relationships were highly significant, a log/log relationship was the closest
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:459306 |
| Date | January 1976 |
| Creators | Hodgins, Henry |
| Publisher | Aston University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://publications.aston.ac.uk/14977/ |
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