New Bike Flows Around Engineering Fountain Purdue University 

The group observed people on the site from around 12 – 1 pm on two separate occasions. We choose the dates of April 6 and April 25 because of the fair weather to record as many students passing through as we could. Based on prior knowledge of the site we had established the routes that are frequently used by cyclists. The diagram to the left shows the three different routes as shown in different colored dashed lines moving through the space. Conflict zones are called out in red circles illustrating the areas where we have observed the most conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists. Equipped with the numbered averages of students using wheeled modes of transportation from our observations, it is clear that route 3 is the best overall route with the least conflicts and smoothest general flow. Based on our observations, this route is already preferred by many students, therefore, adoption of this route should be easy.

As shown earlier, the final results demonstrate a sufficient amount of conflict zones between wheeled vehicle users and pedestrians (within the Engineering Fountain path spokes) to create a separate bike path that travels in front of Hovde Hall. During observation, no conflicts were observed along the path in front of Hovde which is immediately to the west of the fountain area. We propose that a 6ft bike lane be installed that will encourage wheeled vehicle users (cyclists, skateboarders, long-boarders, etc) to not travel directly around the engineering fountain. This new path avoids every conflict zone and will be placed along the eastern edge of a path (see diagram to left) with significantly less pedestrian traffic. It will connect the north edge of the WALC/Centennial Mall Paver Bike Path to the south edge of the stadium mall bike lane. Additionally, we suggest that signage be implemented in 3 separate locations to aid in guiding the proper flow of pedestrians and cyclists.