2025 06 26

When

Thursday June 26, 2025 @ 3:00pm on Microsoft Teams

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Slides

Meeting Slides

Sidewalk and Accessibility Attributes in GATIS Slides

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Agenda

Please join us for the next meeting of the National Collaboration on Bicycle, Pedestrian and Accessibility Infrastructure Data (NC-BPAID)! We’re looking forward to a presentation from Mary DuBose and Kurt Winner of Washington State DOT on their work creating a state-wide sidewalk network with the help of the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology at the University of Washington. We’ll be presenting a first look at the draft specification to see how pedestrian and accessibility infrastructure is represented, and we want your ideas and feedback.

Hope to see you there! And don’t forget to join us in July, when we’ll focus in on how the draft specification represents bicycle infrastructure.

Agenda:

• Welcome
  • Housekeeping
  • Context
  • Meeting Objectives
• NC-BPAID Status Updates
• Co-chair election results
• Open floor for announcements
• Subgroup updates
  • Specification Development – Jeff Maki, Paul Moser, Ryan Westrom
  • Data Practices – Josh Roll and Jonah Chiarenza
  • Outreach – Krista Nordback and Ellwood Hanrahan
• Presentation on Washington state’s sidewalk dataset – Kurt Winner and Mary DuBose, Washington DOT
• Specification Discussion: Sidewalk and accessibility features - Jay Davis, Ryan Westrom, and Sarah Malaier

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Notes

Outreach Subgroup Update

• Encouraging agencies to sign up for field testing
• Developing a list of possible new acronyms
• Krista Nordback stepping down as co-lead
• Next meeting on July 10th at 4pm Eastern

Data Specification Development Subgroup Update

• Draft complete, circulating draft amongst co-chairs and co-leads before sharing with the collaboration
• Will start work on draft two after collaboration feedback and field testing

Data Practices Subgroup Update

• Helped draft the front-matter for the specification draft
• Leads couldn't attend due to schedule conflicts

WSDOT Sidewalk Presentation (Mary DuBose and Kurt Winner)

• Washington State DOT (WSDOT) gave a presentation on the OS-Connect sidewalk network and how detailed sidewalk networks can support transportation planning
• OS-Connect
  • statewide sidewalk network
  • developed with help from the University of Washington Taskar Center
• Before OS-Connect, sidewalk data was maintained at an agency level
  • WSDOT had their own sidewalk data that only covered state roads
  • variable attributes, update frequencies, and methods of collection
  • sidewalk data would sometimes overlap across jurisdictions
  • gaps in sidewalk data because not all agencies had the resources to collect data
• Uses for detailed sidewalk networks
  • creating a robust statewide Level of Stress model
  • project and grant prioritization
  • safety and collision analysis
  • transit access analysis
• WSDOT pursuing access to opportunities (jobs, parks, etc.) as a quantitative framework for their statewide public transportation plan
  • use roadway, sidewalk, transit service + demographic/land use/destination data
  • they can calculate statewide access for all modes
• Questions and Answers / Discussion
  • Is WSDOT contracting with Conveyal
    • WSDOT is contracting with Conveyal
    • Caltrans also contracts with Conveyal to use for project prioritization based on access to jobs/destinations
  • How does WSDOT deal with missing sidewalk data when determining the benefit of new pedestrian infrastructure?
    • For projects that propose pedestrian improvements like signalized crosswalks, sidewalk widening, WSDOT does not have existing ped connectivity data so they currently assume those projects "close a network gap"
    • Next draft of OS-Connect will try to address traversal of areas that don't have sidewalks
  • Does OS-Connect track sidewalk lighting?
    • Not yet but WSDOT thinks it could be a candidate attribute for the next draft of OS-Connect

Specification Discussion: Sidewalk and Accessibility Features (Jay Davis, Ryan Westrom, and Sarah Malaier)

• Presentation slides available here
• General Active Transportation Infrastructure Specification (GATIS)
  • potential acronym name for the specification, not final
• Sarah Malaier with the American Foundation for the Blind gave a presentation on considering accessibility for people with disabilities
  • people with a variety of disabilities: wheelchair users, blind people, people with cognitive disabilities, and people with mobility difficulty
  • different accessibility considerations for each type of disability
  • general Recommendations for routing, asset management, and transportation planning
    • account for a variety of needs
    • focus on improving infrastructure and providing detailed routing
    • allow people to select preferences
    • incorporate real-time data to notify people of construction or broken facilities
• Questions and Answers / Discussion
  • Need to think about the vertical ordering of features (example: sidewalk below a road)
  • People like that the specification can support both linear referencing system (LRS) and non-LRS networks
  • Tier Model discussion
    • The Tier Model helps provide a roadmap or a path to get complete data
    • It allows for multiple levels of compliance and aims to meet data providers where they are rather than creating an unrealistic standard
    • The Tier Model is similar to the OSM Pedestrian Working Group Tier Model
    • Might be helpful to have illustrative use cases for both Tiers and the attributes collected
    • Tier model and data completion
      • For certain attributes it may be high effort to collect all of the data
      • Could sidewalks that have too high of a cross-slope be prioritized?
      • Guiding principles state: The specification describes objective qualities of infrastructure.