"Building Tomorrow’s Sustainable Transportation System through Better Data - Increasing Bikeability and Bike Safety"

Speaker:

Cary Bearn, Christopher Le Dante, Rebecca Serna, Kari Watkins

Date:

2019-02-21 12:00:00

Location:

TSRB (1st Floor Ballroom)

GVU Center Brown Bag Seminar: "Building Tomorrow’s Sustainable Transportation System through Better Data - Increasing Bikeability and Bike Safety"

ABSTRACT
Popular adoption of bicycling as a mode of transportation can reduce overall congestion, air pollution and fossil-fuel energy consumption while at the same time enabling an active lifestyle and providing users with a low cost, equitable means of transportation. For this reason, many planning agencies have incorporated bicycle planning in their long term vision for their regions, including Atlanta. One of the major impediments to choosing bicycle as a transportation mode is safety issues, with major safety perception factors including high speed limits, high traffic volumes, last mile disconnect in the network, and an absence of physically separated facilities for cyclists. Come hear from four experts in bicycle research and planning in the Atlanta area as they talk about crash data analysis, cyclist stress, and work in Atlanta to shift mode share. Attendees will gain a better understanding of research underway, data available for new research, and areas for potential bicycle-related research in the future.

SPEAKER BIOS

Cary Bearn
Cary Bearn joined the City of Atlanta's Office of Mobility Planning as the Chief Bicycle Officer. Prior to this position, she was a Transportation Planner/Engineer at Fehr & Peers in Los Angeles. Recently Cary was a co-author on a paper Dr. Watkins published in Research in Transportation Business and Management in 2018 on adapting a measure of bicycle comfort to evaluate bicycle access to MARTA stations.  Cary Bearn has a Masters in City and Regional Planning and a Masters in Civil Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelors degree in Biology from Williams College.

Christopher Le Dantec
Dr. Christopher Le Dantec is an Associate Professor in the Digital Media Program in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research is focused on the area of digital civics emerging from the intersection of participatory design, digital democracy, and smart cities. He works closely with the City of Atlanta and a range of community-based partners to explore new forms of civic participation through community-centered design inquiry. His research has direct impact on how policy makers and citizens work together to address issues of community engagement, social justice, urban transportation and development. He is the author of Designing Publics (2016, MIT Press).

Rebecca Serna
Executive Director Rebecca Serna has a Master’s degree from Georgia State's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies in Urban Policy in Planning and Nonprofit Management. Serna was a bike/ped intern with the Georgia DOT and draws on her experience as a Fulbright in Bogotá, Colombia, where she studied participatory planning practices and innovative public transportation projects. Awards include 2015 Woman of the Year/Women in Transportation Seminar, 2013 Advocate of the Year/Alliance for Biking and Walking, and the 2013 Longleaf/Georgia Conservancy. She lives in SE Atlanta with her husband and three sons, enjoys gardening, dancing, reading and baking, and looks forward to the day when biking for transportation is unremarkable. 

Kari Watkins
Dr. Kari Watkins is the Frederick Law Olmsted Associate Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. Her teaching and research interests include multi-modal transportation planning, the use of technology in transportation, traveler information, and complete streets design to create a more livable transportation system. Dr. Watkins’ is the recipient of the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) 2017 New Faculty Award and was recently named to Engineering Georgia’s 100 Influential Women to Know