ITS4US Deployment Program Phase 2 Webinar: AccessMap Multimodal: Building a Customizable City-Scale Pedestrian Accessibility Trip Planner, and the Infrastructure to Support It

Presented by University of Washington, Transportation Data Equity Initiative

AccessMap Multimodal is a live, open source, and highly personalizable city-scale pedestrian accessibility map and trip planner that evaluates pedestrian accessibility through traversals of its underlying pedestrian network, inclusive of outdoor and indoor pathways. Evaluating a personalized cost function over all links in an annotated sidewalk and street crossing network, AccessMap captures personal pedestrian mobility profiles in an interactive information retrieval process, generating a growing dataset of practical personal mobility preferences.

AccessMap derives its pedestrian network from the OpenSidewalks project, an open effort by the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology to standardize and gather an extensible network model of pedestrian pathways that has incorporated several large-scale open-source pedestrian networks from diverse data sources. Together, these projects propose a paradigm for the creation and interpretation of pedestrian networks with wide analytical applications and better alignment with transportation equity and accessibility goals.

Date: Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Time: 1:30 to 3:00 pm ET
Presenters: Kate Hartman, Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO)/Federal Highway Administration; Dr. Anat Caspi, Taskar Center for Accessible Technology, University of Washington

To register for this ITS JPO webinar, please visit: UWAccessMapMultimodal.eventbrite.com

The ITS4US Deployment Program, led by the ITS JPO at the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT), expands access to transportation for all travelers with a specific focus on underserved communities, including people with disabilities, older adults, veterans, individuals of low income, people in rural communities and those with limited English proficiency. This program embodies the Administration's priorities of transportation equity, economic growth, sustainability, and most importantly, compassion and inclusivity. The program funds multiple large-scale replicable deployments in three phases:

• Phase 1: concept development
• Phase 2: design and testing
• Phase 3: operations and evaluation.

In June 2022, the deployment sites completed the concept development phase of each of their projects. The U.S. DOT awarded four teams with Phase 2 funding to support the design and testing of their projects based on their Phase 1 concepts. The four deployment sites are:

• Georgia Department of Transportation
• Hear of Iowa Regional Transit Agency
• Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority/Buffalo
• University of Washington

For more details on the ITS4US Deployment program, see the program's website at: its.dot.gov/its4us/.

ITS JPO is hosting a series of free, public webinars to allow each of the four Phase 2 deployment sites to publicly share topics and experiences that would be of interest to deployers considering innovative technology solutions to solve mobility challenges of underserved communities. These webinars will be an opportunity for each site to discuss their experiences during the Design/Build Test/Phase and engage the broader ITS4US Deployment Program Community about their efforts so far in Phase 2. At the end of the presentation, there will be an opportunity for the audience to ask the site questions about their project. Future deployers can benefit from lessons learned and experiences from the ITS4US deployment teams.

Please use the link below to register for the webinar. Live closed captioning will be provided for all webinars. When registering for the webinar, you will be able to request additional accessibility accommodations to participate. The deadline to request accommodations for each webinar will be 5 business days prior to the live event.

Posted 3/13/24