This document summarizes a presentation about cyclists' comfort levels based on data collected through a smartphone app. It discusses how trip purpose, route characteristics like facility type and traffic levels, and stressors can affect comfort. The presentation shows that avoiding routes with commercial vehicles, less traffic, shorter routes, and more separated bike paths can increase comfort. It also found commuter trip comfort is different than exercise or shopping trip comfort. The document proposes measuring cyclists' real-world stress through sensors to better understand how facilities, intersections and traffic impact stress levels.

1. Cyclists’ comfort levels
Presenter: Miguel Figliozzi
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Oregon Active Transportation Summit
Monday March 14th, 2016
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2. Cyclists’ comfort levels
 What are the main sources of stress?
 What are the impacts of facility type and
trip purpose?
 Findings and policy implications
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3. ORcycle Project
 Smartphone app to collect cyclists data
 Available for iOS and Android
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4. Trip Questions
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Questions after completing a trip:
- Purpose
- Frequency
- Route choice factors
- Comfort level
- Safety concerns? (optional)
- Additional comments? (optional)

5. GPS coordinates*
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*Heatmap, not adjusted by trip frequency

6. Exploratory route comfort study
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 Each trip rated on a 1 to 5 scale
 Ordinal Logistic Regression
 Route Comfort as Dependent Variable
 One independent variable at the time
 Pooled models (data for trip purpose,
trip characteristics, stressors)

7. Key insights to increase comfort
 Avoid routes with commercial vehicles
 Less traffic
 Shorter routes (or distance effect?)
 More bike paths or separated facilities
 Commuter trip comfort levels are not the same
as exercise or shopping trip comfort levels
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8. Measuring stress levels for real-
world on-road cyclists: do bicycle
facilities, intersections, and traffic
levels affect cyclists’ stress?
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9. Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)
 GSR has been utilized by many research studies
in fields ranging from psychology to sports
medicine.
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10. Many ingredients…
Power meter
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Smartphone
GSR sensor
Cameras
Heart rate sensor
Awesome
volunteer !

11. Facility types: mixed traffic, off-street,
wide bike lane, and standard bike lane
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Engineering
Building

12. Does peak traffic impact stress levels?
Do intersections impact stress levels?
What about facility types?
Conflicts with other vehicles?
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Key Findings

13. More details ?
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Do you want to know more about measuring
real-world on-road stress levels?
Maps and results in the 30 minute
presentation on Monday 14th (today!), 2:05 pm

14. Final comments
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Results are very promising
Data complementarities
- General policy insights: revealed data +
questions
- Very specific stress measurements for a
facility, e.g.
- compare paths or intersections
- before/after

15. Learn more… Related Papers and Reports
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1. Blanc, B., & Figliozzi, M. (2016a). Modeling the Impacts of Facility Type, Trip
Characteristics, and Trip Stressors on Cyclists’ Comfort Levels Utilizing
Crowdsourced Data. Forthcoming 2016 Transportation Research Record.
2. Blanc, B., Figliozzi, M, Clifton, K. (2016b). How Representative of Bicycling
Populations are Smartphone Application Surveys of Travel Behavior,
Forthcoming 2016 Transportation Research Record
3. Figliozzi, M.A., (2015). Evaluating the use of crowdsourcing as a data
collection method for bicycle performance measures and identification of
facility improvement needs, Final Report SPR 768, ODOT,
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/TD/TP_RES/pages/researchreports.aspx
4. Caviedes, A. & Figliozzi, M. (2016) Measuring stress levels for real-world on-
road cyclists: do bicycle facilities, intersections, and traffic levels affect
cyclists’ stress? Presented at 2016 Transportation Research Board Annual
Meeting, Washington DC.
5. More papers under review…

16. Collaborators
Modeling and ORcycle:
Bryan Blanc (*)
Bikram Maharjan (**)
Robin Murray (**)
(*) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, PSU
(**) Department of Computer Science, PSU
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17. Collaborators
Modeling and measuring real-world on-road Stress
Alvaro Caviedes (*)
Robin Murray (**)
Hoang Le (**)
Feng Liu (**)
Wu-chi Feng (**)
(*) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, PSU
(**) Department of Computer Science, PSU
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NITC supported video analysis piece

18. Safety reports & AskODOT
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Since Nov. 2015 users can email safety reports to
ODOT using the app
- AskODOT receives the email with safety report
data and a link to google maps
- Plus photos and comments
- Commitment to respond within 5 business days

19. THANK YOU
Questions? Comments…
Visit our webpage:
http://www.pdx.edu/transportation-lab
Email us at: ttplab@pdx.edu
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