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Teams of University of Ottawa engineering students spent Saturday devising low-cost, portable and temporary “pop-up” crosswalks that could someday be used to help Bayshore residents safely cross a busy neighbourhood road.
Competing in a design competition organized by the campus chapter of Engineers Without Borders and Ottawa’s Healthy Transportation Coalition, the five groups were asked to create a pedestrian crossing that could be used on Woodridge Crescent near the Bayshore Transitway station.
A new crosswalk was a top priority picked by Bayshore residents who participated in a recent session led by the coalition, which hopes to make the neighbourhood a better, safer place to walk, cycle or access public transit. Millions of people visit the adjacent Bayshore shopping centre each year and many come by car, making traffic on the four-lane Woodridge often heavy.
Using everything from pipe cleaners and twine to popsicle sticks and glue, as well as design software, the teams had to come up with a structure that could collapse and store easily, be assembled quickly by people with little training, cost less than $1,000 and include its own self-contained power source.
Annie Russell, an organizer and second-year electrical engineering student, said the challenge would help students think more about “human-centred design” — an approach that incorporate the user’s needs into the design process from the start.
“You’d hope that’s how things happen, but that’s not what’s happened in the Bayshore community,” she said.
There aren’t enough crosswalks on Woodridge, the few there are don’t all line up with well-used pedestrian paths and people trying to get to the transit station have to go out of their way to get to a crosswalk in order to get to the other side safely, she said.
“We’re trying to avoid this kind of situation, where the crosswalk isn’t where it needs to be,” Russell said.
Each team had three hours to develop an idea and use the craft supplies to build a prototype.
At one table, a team used plasticene, popsicle sticks and wire to bring its creation to life.
As Katie Chu, a second-year civil engineering student, explained, the idea was to have two square stands — one for each side of the road — that would fit together as a box and have wheels to make the unit easy to tow.
University of Ottawa engineering students, from left: Dawn Padiernos, Charlie Bates, Joseph Kim and Katie Chu show off their prototype of a ‘pop-up’ crosswalk, which they built Saturday as part of a
design challenge organized by the campus chapter of Engineers Without Borders and Ottawa’s Healthy Transportation Coalition.
Once in location, the box would be separated in two, to create one stand for each side of the street. The boxes would contain the rest of the parts required to put together a lightweight, five-metre pole and raise a cable the same way a volleyball net is cranked up. Reflective mesh and LED lights would be strung across the cable to signify the presence of the “pop up” crossing.
“We could totally commercialize this,” Chu told her teammates.
Another group designed a pair of telescopic poles that could be easily assembled and then used to string a line of lights over the intersection. Disassembled, the kit would ideally fit into the a truck bed.
A third team’s design envisioned a telescopic pole that would fit into a box with wheels to make the unit easy to move. It, too, would rely on some type of crank mechanism to raise a cable and hold overhead crossing signals.
Trevor Haché of the Healthy Transportation Coalition said the ultimate solution would probably combine the best elements from several proposals, including the winning one, which was comprised of two, telescopic poles that would stand on either side of the road with signage and lights to alert drivers to the crossing.
Haché plans to meet with Bay Coun. Mark Taylor soon to discuss the pop-up ideas, which may be implemented for a day or weekend sometime this summer.
Another pop-up session is planned for the Herongate-Ledbury-Ridgemont-Elmwood neighbourhood, he said.
mpearson@postmedia.com
twitter.com/mpearson78
查看原文...
Competing in a design competition organized by the campus chapter of Engineers Without Borders and Ottawa’s Healthy Transportation Coalition, the five groups were asked to create a pedestrian crossing that could be used on Woodridge Crescent near the Bayshore Transitway station.
A new crosswalk was a top priority picked by Bayshore residents who participated in a recent session led by the coalition, which hopes to make the neighbourhood a better, safer place to walk, cycle or access public transit. Millions of people visit the adjacent Bayshore shopping centre each year and many come by car, making traffic on the four-lane Woodridge often heavy.
Using everything from pipe cleaners and twine to popsicle sticks and glue, as well as design software, the teams had to come up with a structure that could collapse and store easily, be assembled quickly by people with little training, cost less than $1,000 and include its own self-contained power source.
Annie Russell, an organizer and second-year electrical engineering student, said the challenge would help students think more about “human-centred design” — an approach that incorporate the user’s needs into the design process from the start.
“You’d hope that’s how things happen, but that’s not what’s happened in the Bayshore community,” she said.
There aren’t enough crosswalks on Woodridge, the few there are don’t all line up with well-used pedestrian paths and people trying to get to the transit station have to go out of their way to get to a crosswalk in order to get to the other side safely, she said.
“We’re trying to avoid this kind of situation, where the crosswalk isn’t where it needs to be,” Russell said.
Each team had three hours to develop an idea and use the craft supplies to build a prototype.
At one table, a team used plasticene, popsicle sticks and wire to bring its creation to life.
As Katie Chu, a second-year civil engineering student, explained, the idea was to have two square stands — one for each side of the road — that would fit together as a box and have wheels to make the unit easy to tow.
University of Ottawa engineering students, from left: Dawn Padiernos, Charlie Bates, Joseph Kim and Katie Chu show off their prototype of a ‘pop-up’ crosswalk, which they built Saturday as part of a
design challenge organized by the campus chapter of Engineers Without Borders and Ottawa’s Healthy Transportation Coalition.
Once in location, the box would be separated in two, to create one stand for each side of the street. The boxes would contain the rest of the parts required to put together a lightweight, five-metre pole and raise a cable the same way a volleyball net is cranked up. Reflective mesh and LED lights would be strung across the cable to signify the presence of the “pop up” crossing.
“We could totally commercialize this,” Chu told her teammates.
Another group designed a pair of telescopic poles that could be easily assembled and then used to string a line of lights over the intersection. Disassembled, the kit would ideally fit into the a truck bed.
A third team’s design envisioned a telescopic pole that would fit into a box with wheels to make the unit easy to move. It, too, would rely on some type of crank mechanism to raise a cable and hold overhead crossing signals.
Trevor Haché of the Healthy Transportation Coalition said the ultimate solution would probably combine the best elements from several proposals, including the winning one, which was comprised of two, telescopic poles that would stand on either side of the road with signage and lights to alert drivers to the crossing.
Haché plans to meet with Bay Coun. Mark Taylor soon to discuss the pop-up ideas, which may be implemented for a day or weekend sometime this summer.
Another pop-up session is planned for the Herongate-Ledbury-Ridgemont-Elmwood neighbourhood, he said.
mpearson@postmedia.com
twitter.com/mpearson78
查看原文...
