Optimizing the Planning of Pedestrian Facilities Upgrade Projects to Maximize Accessibility for People with Disabilities
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146, Issue 1
Abstract
Federal and state laws require governments to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities on their pedestrian facilities. State and local governments are required to develop transition plans to upgrade inaccessible pedestrian facilities to fully comply with all accessibility requirements. This paper presents the development of a novel model that is capable of optimizing the scheduling of pedestrian facilities upgrade projects to maximize compliance with accessibility laws and regulations. The model provides original contributions to support decision makers in (1) quantifying the impact of upgrading noncompliant pedestrian facilities on people with disabilities; (2) identifying near-optimal trade-offs among the three optimization objectives of minimizing total number of interrupted pedestrian trips, minimizing total upgrade duration, and minimizing annual upgrade budget; (3) generating detailed schedules for upgrading noncompliant pedestrian facilities to satisfy ADA transition plan requirements; and (4) creating graphic maps of the generated near-optimal transition plans. A case study of a real-life city that includes 4,178 noncompliant pedestrian facilities was analyzed to evaluate the performance of the model and illustrate its novel and unique capabilities.
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Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This material is based on a work supported by the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), research funded under Project No. R-27-136. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Illinois Department of Transportation.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146 • Issue 1 • January 2020
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 27, 2018
Accepted: May 2, 2019
Published online: Oct 30, 2019
Published in print: Jan 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Mar 30, 2020
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