MSCA-COFUND-CLEAR-Doc-PhD Position#CD22-35: NEW ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY OF URBAN REDEVELOPMENT DESIGN FOR BETTER INTERCONNECTION OF CYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN NETWORKS ALONG THE DOCK SIDES OF A WATERWAY

In a city, the street network is heterogeneous in terms of composition but also of infrastructure due to the adaptation of the layout to more and more different users. Current urban traffic flow in European city centers are composed of pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, and other personal mobility devices (PMD). However, integrating pedestrians, bicycles, PMDs and more generally heterogeneous mobility solutions in urban areas raises important unresolved issues regarding the transport policy. Nowadays, it is fundamental to develop strategies facilitating the cohabitation between the different street users, mitigating road sharing in between integration and segregation, and to device safe and efficient urban planning solutions, especially for vulnerable users such as pedestrians. The case of the docks of a harbor or a river bank is even more problematic due to the narrow sidewalk space and the proximity of water.

Focusing on the sidewalk space, there are two ways of managing people motions in a mixed traffic: segregation strategies consisting in reserving specific lanes to the different users, and urban furnitures slowing down and securing the flows. Sidewalk sharing strategies can be implemented by way of road marking between cycling path for PMD and pedestrian space. When designing a future redevelopment project, a method is required to assess are required to evaluate different scenario of sidewalk traffic strategy such as: a basic layout with free mixed traffic, a cycle way with physical separator, and a shared way with road marking boundaries for PMD.

The impact of infrastructure modifications can be measured according to two indicators: Security -necessity of a comfortable interaction with equity in road sharing- and travel time -efficiency of the new urban layout proposed compared to the current one. The aim is to build a tool that help devise sidewalk design, rule and priority solutions providing safe and efficient motion conditions to the different users. It requires to identify critical links, curbs and intersections where frictions between sidewalk users can happen under a given scenario of mobility. Different settings of cycling and street infrastructure can be modeled numerically, as well as various urban environments. The aim of the thesis is to build such model in 3D and use it to virtually assess the redevelopment propositions.

As part of Margherita Pazzini's (Unibo) thesis, a redevelopment of the Port of Rimini canal was proposed after on-site inspection in the form of 2D/3D drawings of the changes to the transport infrastructure. The main objective of the proposed redevelopment is to make cycling and walking on the platforms more fluid, and to facilitate their interaction. An immersive visit with 3D modeling of the entire Port Canal is being created with Unibo, in order to predict and describe the quality of the environment and urban spaces in the project situation and to validate the renovation proposals. A virtual tour of the canal in the reference situation (current situation see photo) is also under construction. These scenes include flows of people moving in three modes: walking/cycling/car.

The question that arises is how to compare these infrastructures, how to qualify the improvement that the proposed redevelopments would bring in relation to the flow of people, using these virtual scenes. The project consists of selecting videos or a VR visit taken from these scenes, showing them to a group of participants and submitting them to a questionnaire. A specific corpus of inhabitants of the region that already know the places will be investigated in order to study their real-life experience and their projection in the future renovated spaces. The analysis of the responses to this questionnaire would make it possible to compare the transport infrastructures before and after the project, by analyzing virtual scenes with movement of people. The use of real scenes is not possible for the post-project situation because the renovations are not planned until 2024.

GRETTIA and Unibo are collaborating on the infrastructure part (quays, buildings, roads and pathways) and the integration of multimodal travel to populate virtual environments, and this thesis would research methods and knowledge on scene comparison from of videos or VR head-mounted display. In particular, the creation of questionnaires and their interpretation will be part of the study.