Dr. Billy Fields, Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science, weighed in on the recent public discussion about Austin’s biking and cycling traffic in a radio interview by 90.5 KUT, Austin’s NPR Station. The interview revolved around Austin’s traffic problems and the implementation of the 2016 Corridor Mobility Program, a $482M program meant to improve the overall transportation system throughout Austin. Fields stressed the importance of regularly collecting data on bicycle traffic in order to assure an adequate number of bike paths. “We need to institutionalize [the] data-collection system,” he noted.
Dr. Fields annually takes several Texas State political science students to Amsterdam, cycling capital of the world, to perform research on traffic mitigation methodologies which can be reproduced in the United States under Texas State’s International Sustainable Transportation Engagement Program, I-STEP.
The radio interview may be found at http://kut.org/post/research-aims-get-handle-how-cities-share-bike-and-pedestrian-data-txdot.
