Content uploaded by Clive D'Souza
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Clive D'Souza on Nov 22, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Effects of transit bus interior configuration on performance of wheeled mobility users during simulated boarding and disembarking
Abstract and Figures
The emergence of low-floor bus designs and related regulatory standards in the U.S. have resulted in substantial improvements in public transit accessibility. However, passengers using wheeled mobility devices still experience safety concerns and inefficiencies in boarding, disembarking, and interior circulation on low-floor buses. This study investigates effects of low-floor bus interior configuration and passenger crowding on boarding and disembarking efficiency and safety. Users of manual wheelchairs (n = 18), powered wheelchairs (n = 21) and electric scooters (n = 9) simulated boarding and disembarking in three interior layout configurations at low and high passenger crowding conditions on a full-scale laboratory mock-up of a low-floor bus. Dependent measures comprised task times and critical incidents during access ramp use, fare payment, and movement to and from the doorway and wheeled mobility securement area. Individual times for unassisted boarding ranged from 15.2 to 245.3 s and for disembarking ranged from 9.1 to 164.6 s across layout and passenger crowding conditions. Nonparametric analysis of variance showed significant differences and interactions across vehicle design conditions, passenger load and mobility device type on user performance. The configuration having electronic on-board fare payment, rear-bus entrance doorways and adjacent device securement areas demonstrated greatest efficiency and safety. High passenger load adversely impacted efficiency and frequency of critical incidents during on-board circulation across all three layouts. Findings have broader implications for improving transit system efficiency and quality of service across the spectrum of transit users.
Figures - uploaded by Clive D'Souza
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Clive D'Souza
Content may be subject to copyright.
... Several researchers have examined this aspect. Firstly, the fare payment is the first step after boarding, the traditional cash payment will increase the difficulty of payment and counting, or even cause time pressure and anxiety for the passengers [16]. Moreover, it is found that the design of some urban buses does not sufficiently consider the legroom for passengers, and there are overlaps between the legroom and a standard aisle for wheelchairs, especially when the bus is crowded, or the seats are face-to-face [9,16]. ...
... Firstly, the fare payment is the first step after boarding, the traditional cash payment will increase the difficulty of payment and counting, or even cause time pressure and anxiety for the passengers [16]. Moreover, it is found that the design of some urban buses does not sufficiently consider the legroom for passengers, and there are overlaps between the legroom and a standard aisle for wheelchairs, especially when the bus is crowded, or the seats are face-to-face [9,16]. Also, the securement area is not stable and well-designed. ...
... The public attitude is also a social barrier that keeps wheelchair users away from the bus. The legroom for other passengers is not enough, resulting in a collision between wheelchairs and other passengers [9,16], which might cause dissatisfaction and quarrels. Moreover, one participant in a study by Velho et al. complains about the nonfeasance of transport authority, resulting in a loss of confidence in traveling [18]. ...
In this aging society, the number of wheelchair users is increasing. As an affordable travel mode for them, the urban bus, a universal public transportation, should pay more attention to its accessibility. This essay explores the multifaceted issues wheelchair users face in accessing urban bus transportation. Multiple studies highlight the current state of urban bus accessibility problems in various cities by categorizing them into physical and social barriers. For the physical barriers, the full experience of wheelchair users taking the bus is discussed separately including moving to and from bus stops, waiting on platforms, boarding and alighting the bus, and moving within the bus to the securement area. It is found that the most common accessible problems of the urban bus include the unfriendly built environment, the platform that lack of information and protection, steep ramps, narrow aisles, and unsafe securement areas. Social barriers such as indifferent attitudes from bus drivers and the general public further complicate mobility for wheelchair users. Recommendations are provided to improve both the physical infrastructure and the social environment including training of bus drivers, ergonomic design, stop renovation, and awareness campaigns, aiming to create a more inclusive and accessible urban bus system for wheelchair users.
... With the globalization of ergonomics, the demand for the race-and gender-aware anthropometric data of the human body to design products and systems optimized for global users has increased [2], [3]. Therefore, anthropometry that can provide statistical information about human bodies have been utilized in various fields such as workspace design [4], clothing design [5], transportation design [6], [7]. ...
In recent years, with the commercialization of three-dimensional (3D) scanners, there is an increasing demand for automated techniques that can extract anthropometric data accurately and swiftly from 3D human body scans. With advancement in computer vision and machine learning, researchers have increasingly focused on developing automated anthropometric data extraction technique. In this paper, we propose a deep learning method for automatic anthropometric landmark extraction from 3D human scans. We adopt a coarse-to-fine approach consists of a global detection stage and a local refinement stage to fully utilize the original geometric information of input scan. Moreover, we introduce a novel geodesic heatmap that effectively captures the point distribution of 3D shapes, even in the presence of variations in scanning pose. As a result, our method provides the lowest average detection error on the SHREC’14 dataset over the six anthropometric landmarks, demonstrating a maximum error reduction of 76.14%. Additionally, we created a dataset consisting of human scans with various poses to demonstrate robustness of our method. Thanks to our new datasets, our end-to-end strategy showed its effectiveness to various human postures without any predefined features and templates.
Access to transport is key to people’s movement in cities, their social participation, and personal development. People with mobility disabilities (PMDs) face additional barriers when using public transport. The objective of this study is to identify the dilemmas that PMDs face in their daily mobility practices and their coping strategies, in particular the ways in which these dilemmas and strategies are influenced by both personal and environmental characteristics. We conducted ethnographic research, utilizing narrative interviews, life stories, focus groups, and participant observations. Our aim was to analyse multiple experiences of mobility in situations of disability in Quebec City, Canada. This study engages the following research question: how do PMDs navigate their social environment, considering the impact of personal, social, and physical landscape factors on their mobility strategies? Depending on the accessibility of fixed-route public buses and the availability of public paratransit services, what are the dilemmas that PMDs face and how do they shape their mobility strategies? Using the three-dimensional model of narrative analysis, we present a narrative ethnography of participants’ dilemmas and strategies about their experiences on public transport. Five dilemmas are examined. Through this methodology, we propose to extend the study of “constellations of mobility” by including the notion of strategies as an experiential outcome between personal and physical landscape factors, practices, and meanings of mobility. This offers new research perspectives both in disability and mobility studies and in the understanding of urban accessibility experiences in situations of disability.
Background
Laptops are ubiquitous tools in today's society; however, their prolonged use often leads to discomfort and musculoskeletal disorders due to their nonergonomic design. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of an innovative adjustable laptop stand in enhancing comfort and productivity during typing tasks.
Methods
A 2-phase experimental design was employed. Phase 1 involved the development of a novel laptop stand considering ergonomic principles and expert recommendations. In Phase 2, a total of 25 office workers—13 men and 12 women—participated in 3 randomized sessions of a 2-hour typing task. They used the newly designed stand, adjusted their laptop height using conventional methods, or completed the task without any height adjustment (control). The Local Subjective Discomfort Questionnaire (LPD), the Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA), and speed and error rates were used to measure postural risk, subjective discomfort, and typing performance, respectively, during each session. SPSS Version 26 (IBM) was used for the analysis, and P ˂ 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results
The RULA scores were significantly lower with the newly designed stand compared with the other conditions. When using the stand, perceived discomfort in specific regions significantly decreased (P < 0.05). Moreover, the number of typing errors significantly reduced with the stand (P < 0.05), while no significant difference was observed in typing speed (P = 0.371).
Conclusion
The novel adjustable laptop stand significantly reduced discomfort and improved typing accuracy during typing tasks, suggesting its potential to enhance user comfort and productivity. However, further longitudinal studies are needed to assess the long-term effects of this intervention.
div class="section abstract"> Challenges that persons with disabilities face with current modes of transportation have led to difficulties in carrying out everyday tasks, such as grocery shopping and going to doctors’ appointments. Autonomous vehicles have been proposed as a solution to overcome these challenges and make these everyday tasks more accessible. For these vehicles to be fully accessible, the infrastructure surrounding them need to be safe, easy to use, and intuitive for people with disabilities. Thus, the goal of this work was to analyze interview data from persons with disabilities, and their caregivers, to identify barriers to accessibility for current modes of transportation and ways to ameliorate them in pick up/drop off zones for autonomous vehicles. To do this, interview subjects were recruited from adaptive sports clubs, assistive living facilities, and other disability networks to discuss challenges with current public transit stops/stations. Responses to questions were recorded and later analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively to determine 1) common challenges with the current infrastructure around public transit and 2) the number of people who experienced each common challenge. Four challenges were mentioned by nearly every participant: timing or scheduling the transportation, uneven surfaces near the pick up/drop off zone, weather, and steep inclines around the pick up/drop off zone. Each challenge hampered the interview subjects’ ability to access their target vehicle and were mentioned by 90% of the subjects. These challenges informed solutions that could be applied to autonomous vehicle pick up/drop off zones and included on-site ride hailing mechanisms and enclosed, or at least covered, raised platforms with appropriately graded inclines. These solutions were explored using design software. Challenges with current transportation infrastructure were identified in this work, and their respective solutions can help ensure that future autonomous vehicles are accessible to persons with disabilities, a population for whom they have significant benefit.
</div
Public Transport (PT) provides passenger mobility and contributes to sustainable transportation. To achieve this a PT system must provide continuous accessible service and connections for passengers. PT reliability is considered a major obstacle to growing its market share. Current solutions primarily address travel time reliability through methods like priority lanes and traffic signal priority. Dwell time reliability improvement, in turn, can be achieved by the use of smart cards which reduce the variability in boarding and alighting times. Another factor affecting reliability is in-vehicle crowdedness which causes delays and increases dwell time variability. To mitigate crowdedness, we propose a monetary approach that dynamically changes the fare based on the in-vehicle crowdedness level in a manner similar to congestion pricing. This approach would shift some passengers from boarding the over-crowded vehicle to waiting for the next, less crowded vehicle, while compensating them for the additional waiting. Passengers unwilling to wait might pay a penalty if the additional waiting time is reasonable. To assess the attitude of passengers towards a dynamic fare model, a stated preference questionnaire was developed to assess the factors that affect the choice of whether or not to board an over-crowded vehicle. Based on panel data and the fixed effect logit model it was revealed that the higher the waiting time, the lower the willingness to board the next vehicle. However, monetary schemes (penalties or discounts) increased the willingness to wait and board the next vehicle. Moreover, the willingness to wait was higher when a penalty was introduced compared to a discount, which is in line with the prospect theory. The results suggest that it is possible to construct a dynamic fare model that using data on vehicle crowdedness levels and waiting times obtained from advanced data collection systems, which is integrated within a mobile payment application. This approach could reduce crowdedness and increase reliability.
The mobility of bus space is strong and there are many facilities and functional areas in the bus, which makes interior design works difficult. Visual search can reflect the adaptability of passengers to a certain space to some extent. However, this ability of the elderly is significantly different from that of the young group. Therefore, an interior layout suitable for older passengers should make up for the lack of information in their process of visual search. This paper summarized 48 bus interior layouts and established the correlation model between the acceptability of the elderly and their eye movement characteristics including fixation, saccade and pupil diameter when observing these layouts. On this basis, the visual search law of the elderly was found and the important areas were located. By means of this method, the priority of the key functional areas to guide the vision of the elderly was figured out. The study found that for old people, the initial recognition degree of the rear seat area was higher, and there were more meaningful clues in the middle right part. The conclusions provided a reference for determining the position of visual symbols which were used to guide the line of sight and designing an elderly-oriented layout in buses.
Digital media technologies have been gradually integrated into teaching activities over the past few years, providing teachers with more possibilities for teaching. This study examines the teaching effects of an interactive AI based image-processing platform in assisting as a teaching aid for children painting education. In this study, we compared the learning interest, learning attitude, and continuous learning intention of 96 children aged 5 to 13 in the process of painting education. The subjects were divided into two groups: the experimental group used AI image processing for painting education, and the control group utilized traditional teaching methods for painting learning. Results showed that the use of AI image-processing tools in painting education reduces girls’ learning attitudes and continuous learning intention, while stimulating boys’ learning interest.
Background:
Due to the rapid growth of metropolises and the insufficiency of public transportation, nowadays, many people travel on these vehicles in a standing position. This position leads to discomfort and the risk of falling or non-collision incidents for the passengers.
Objective:
The present study was conducted to analyze an innovative sit-standing seat to prevent falls and non-collision injuries in standing passengers.
Methods:
A total of sixteen participated in this study. EMG signal and Borg scale were used to assess muscle activity and discomfort, respectively.
Results:
The mean Borg scale score for perceived discomfort was lower in the sit-standing position than the standing position in all body organs, except for the hips. Also, in the sit-standing position, the muscle activity of the soleus and medial gastrocnemius muscles was significantly lower in the constant velocity and entire phases in both legs, lower in the right leg in the acceleration phase and lower in the left leg in the deceleration phase.
Conclusions:
So this seat can be used as an innovative idea to improve the ergonomic condition of standing passengers to prevent falls and non-collision injuries on transit buses.
To estimate the prevalence of wheeled mobility device (WhMD) ramp-related incidents while boarding/alighting a public transit bus and determine whether frequency of incidents is less when ramp slope meets the proposed ADA maximum allowable limit of ≤9.5°.
Observational.
Community public transportation.
414 WhMD users accessing a public transit bus using an instrumented ramp.
Not applicable.
Prevalence of boarding/alighting incidents involving WhMD users and associated ramp slopes; factors influencing incidents.
4.6% of WhMD users experienced an incident while boarding or alighting a transit bus. Significantly more incidents occurred during boarding (7.0%) than alighting (2.2%) (p<0.01), and when the ramp was deployed to street level (mean slope=11.4°) compared to sidewalk level (mean slope=4.2°) (p=0.01). Odds ratio for experiencing an incident when ramp slope exceeded the proposed ADA maximum allowable ramp slope was 5.4 (95% CI: 2.4(o) to 12.2(o), p<0.01). Odds ratio for assistance being rendered to board/alight when ramp slope exceeded the proposed ADA maximum allowable ramp slope was 5.1 (95% CI: 2.9 to 9.0, p<0.01).
Findings support the proposed ADA maximum allowable ramp slope of 9.5(o). Ramp slopes >9.5(o), and ramps deployed to street level are associated with greater frequency of incidents and provision of assistance. Transit agencies should increase awareness among bus operators of the effect kneeling and deployment location (street/sidewalk) have on ramp slope. Additionally, ramp components and the built environment may contribute to incidents. When prescribing WhMDs, skills training must include ascending/descending ramps at slopes encountered during boarding/alighting to assure safe and independent access to public transit buses.
Copyright © 2015 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Dwell time is the time that a public transport vehicle remains stopped while transferring passengers. Dwell time depends on the number of boarding and alighting passengers plus other characteristics, such as platform height, door width, fare collection method, internal layout of the vehicle, and occupancy of the vehicle. Traditionally, dwell time has been described as a linear function of the number of passengers boarding and alighting. In this paper, results are presented of dwell time parameters obtained from real-scale experiments made at the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory, University College London. Three variables were controlled: platform height (0, 150, and 300 mm), door width (800 and 1,600 mm), and fare collection method (prepayment outside the vehicle and payment with an electronic card at the entrance of the vehicle). For each value of the variables mentioned above, between 15 and 20 runs were recorded on videotape with four cameras and different views. In total, 300 records of boarding and alighting processes were obtained. Some results indicate that door width has more influence than platform height. For example, it was found that a wider door can reduce the average alighting time by almost 40%, regardless of platform height, and can reduce the average boarding time by 20%. However, for the same door width, a lower platform reduces the average alighting time by only 1% to 9%. More results and analysis are reported in this paper.
Longitudinal data from factorial experiments frequently arise in various fields of study, ranging from medicine and biology to public policy and sociology. In most practical sit-uations, the distribution of observed data is unknown and there may exist a number of atypical measurements and outliers. Hence, use of parametric and semiparametric proce-dures that impose restrictive distributional assumptions on observed longitudinal samples becomes questionable. This, in turn, has led to a substantial demand for statistical pro-cedures that enable us to accurately and reliably analyze longitudinal measurements in factorial experiments with minimal conditions on available data, and robust nonparamet-ric methodology offering such a possibility becomes of particular practical importance. In this article, we introduce a new R package nparLD which provides statisticians and researchers from other disciplines an easy and user-friendly access to the most up-to-date robust rank-based methods for the analysis of longitudinal data in factorial settings. We illustrate the implemented procedures by case studies from dentistry, biology, and medicine.
Dear Collague,
please note that the requested paper is a book - and due to copyright protection, I cannot send you this book. But there are lots of papers on this topic, including a 50 pages long review paper. Just drop me a mail on my regular email account
ebrunne1@gwdg.de
- and I can send you the following articles/papers:
Brunner, E. and Langer, F. (2000). Nonparametric Analysis of Ordered Categorical Data in Designs with Longitudinal Observations and Small Sample Sizes. Biometrical Journal 42, 663-675.
Brunner, E. and Puri, M.L. (2001). Nonparametric Methods in Factorial Designs. Statistical Papers 42, 1-52.
Brunner, E. and Puri, M.L. (2001). Point and interval estimators for nonparametric treatment effects in designs with repeated measures. In: Data Analysis from Statistical Foundations: Festschrift in Honor of Donald A.S. Fraser. (Editor: A.K.E. Saleh) Nova Science Publishers, Inc., New York, 167–178.
Konietschke, F., Bathke, A.C., Hothorn, L.A., and Brunner, E. (2010). Testing and Estimation of purely nonparametric effects in repeated measures designs. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis 53, 730-741.
Noguchi, K., Gel, Y., Brunner, E. , Konietschke, F. (2012). nparLD: An R Software Package for the Nonparametric Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Factorial Experiments. Journal of Statistical Software 50, Iss. 12.
Kind regards,
Edgar Brunner
We study simultaneous rank procedures for unbalanced designs with independent observations. The hypotheses are formulated in terms of purely nonparametric treatment effects. In this context, we derive rank-based multiple contrast test procedures and simultaneous confidence intervals which take the correlation between the test statistics into account. Hereby, the individual test decisions and the simultaneous confidence intervals are compatible. This means, whenever an individual hypothesis has been rejected by the multiple contrast test, the corresponding simultaneous confidence interval does not include the null, i.e. the hypothetical value of no treatment effect. The procedures allow for testing arbitrary purely nonparametric multiple linear hypotheses (e.g. many-to-one, all-pairs, changepoint, or even average comparisons). We do not assume homogeneous variances of the data; in particular, the distributions can have different shapes even under the null hypothesis. Thus, a solution to the multiple nonparametric Behrens-Fisher problem is presented in this unified framework.
Recent research on the anthropometry of wheeled mobility devices and their users (n = 369) indicates that the current dimensions for clear floor area prescribed in U. S. accessibility standards for transportation are inadequate for accommodating many users of wheeled mobility devices, especially those who use power chairs and scooters. The current report presents anthropometry data for determining the dimensions of clear floor area on the basis of occupied device length and width to achieve a specified level of physical accommodation. The implications of the findings and the need to revise guidelines for accessible public transportation systems are discussed. The transportation industry as well as mobility device manufacturers, vendors, and prescribers should understand the limitations of current standards and become involved in the dialogue about how to improve them.
The research literature on access ramps used in transit vehicles is undermined by inconsistent methodologies used across studies, thus providing an inconclusive evidence base for proposed Federal guidelines that would impose a maximum 1:6 slope for all deployment situations. The current study assessed the usability of ramp slope for mobility aid users. Four access ramp slopes were evaluated, with 27 adults representing three populations: manual wheelchair users, power wheelchair users, and people with vision impairment who use a cane or service animal. The dependent variables included five usability measures. The 1:8 and 1:12 slopes were usable and acceptable for most participants. The data indicate that the 1:4 slope is too steep for safe unassisted boarding and disembarking. Many manual wheelchair users lacked the strength needed for unassisted ascent. Power wheelchair users and people with vision impairment expressed safety concerns about descent of steeper slopes. Conclusive interpretations should be cautiously drawn because the sample size was relatively small and did not include users of scooters or ambulation aids.
This article summarises the findings of a study which aimed to evaluate a selection of commercially available portable ramps in the United Kingdom. The ramps were tested by wheelchair users and ambulant disabled people, in order to assess ease of use, safety and user acceptance. Some points which should be taken into consideration when recommending or selecting a portable ramp are highlighted.