Pooley Presents at APA National Planning Conference

Mark Pooley, a research assistant in the environmental policy program, presented at the American Planning Association's National Planning Conference in Chicago on Prioritizing complete streets infrastructure for commuter safety and health: a link-level cost-benefit approach.

Pooley worked with environmental policy researcher, Scott Spak, on the project where they used network analysis as a method for evaluating bicycling access to destinations. Additionally, they've been working on prioritizing bicycle networks for commuter safety and health.

Pooley focused on Iowa City/Coralville as the case study area, combining a few methods to provide a set of tools for evaluating the benefits and costs of different types of bicycle infrastructure (bike lanes, dedicated paths, shared use roadways) based on estimated ridership. 

"We coupled this process with urban network analysis to quantitatively evaluate how improving bicycle infrastructure improves access to destinations for bicycle commuters," says Pooley. "So, we were able to take every location on a roadway network and determine how many destinations could be accessed within a 15-minute bike ride on the actual network." 

Pooley's research has also been presented at the Iowa Bike Summit & Expo in Des Moines this past January.