The accidents’ data in Portugal show an urgent need to improve the safety of
vulnerable users in urban areas. In 2013 73% of the total pedestrians fatalities
registered in urban areas occurred in local roads (ANSR, 2014). Many urban roads
are multifunctional, used by vulnerable users and motorized traffic, which results
in substantial differences in speed and degree of protection, producing a drastic
asymmetry between the mobility of motor vehicles and the safety of vulnerable
users. Traffic calming appears as a useful tool to mitigate this problem.
In Portugal, recent legislation allows the implementation of urban traffic calming
schemes particularly adapted for residential areas: 30 km/h zones and shared
spaces (woonerf zones or home zones). With this in regard the existence of a
minimum standardized methodology for the implementation of these schemes is
essential to ensure an adequate selection of the urban area and a proper choice
of the physical measures and road environmental changes to implement.
“Before and after” studies are essential evaluation approaches of the transformed
urban areas. Nevertheless, before the implementation of these schemes it would
be helpful to have an idea on the impact of these measures without having to
disturb the real system. Using microsimulation models it is possible to represent
the reality with high detail, simulating the real network conditions and developing
a perform analysis with computer representations.The feasibility and applicability of these concepts were tested in the
development of a real case study, where changes were proposed to some
areas of the neighbourhood Norton de Matos in Coimbra and a microsimulation
model was built to evaluate the local and peripheral effects
of such traffic calming schemes. A methodology for implementing such
interventions in residential areas is presented. For that purpose a resident/
visitor survey was also elaborated.
The results were particularly interesting. Population showed to be
aware of the speed impacts and open to the implementation of such
measures, defending the speed control and the safeguard of the pedestrians
in residential areas. In a general analysis the evaluation of the
results showed that the application of traffic calming measures would not
generate a significant increase of the inter-zonal travel times, achieving
however significant reductions in through traffic volumes and speeds
within the study case area.