About
This catalog is compiled by graduate students in DES-3353 "Advanced Seminar in City Form: Future of Streets" at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The videos, filmed by students, describe typical use patterns of streets during indicated weekdays and times. The video material was used to count pedestrians, bicyclists and vehicles using the street, indicated as people per hour (see details below). Corresponding modal capacity estimates are explained below. A PDF case-study of each street can be downloaded to the left of each video, offering a more detailed context and history of each case-study street. Indicator ranges for numeric values in right-hand-side columns can be adjusted by toggling and sorting the column headers.
People on foot per hour
Observed number of pedestrians per hour, counted from the video. Values are interpolated from 15- or 30-minute counts.
People on bike per hour
Observed number of bicyclists per hour, counted from the video. Values are interpolated from 15- or 30-minute counts.
People in vehicles per hour
Observed number of cars, trucks or buses per hour, counted from the video. Following average trip characteristics from the National Household Travel Survey, each car is assumed to carry 1.67 people and each bus is assumed to carry 9.2 people.
People on foot per hour (Capacity)
Pedestrian capacity estimates reflect the assumed maximum number of pedestrians that can travel through the given street profile without uncomfortable congestion, assuming 9,000 people per hour per 9-foot sidewalk. The numbers are adjusted according to the width of observed space for each mode. See the typical assumptions diagram below for reference.
People on bike per hour (Capacity)
Bicycle capacity estimates reflect the assumed maximum number of bicyclists that can travel through the given street profile without uncomfortable congestion, assuming 3,750 bikes per hour per 9-foot bike lane. The numbers are adjusted according to the width of observed space for each mode. See the typical assumptions diagram below for reference.
People on vehicle per hour (Capacity)
Vehicle capacity estimates reflect the assumed maximum number of people that can travel using cars, buses, trucks or other types of vehicles through a given street profile without uncomfortable congestion. We assumed 1,100 people in cars per direction per hour per lane and 6,000 people in an exclusive bus lane per direction per hour per lane. The numbers are adjusted according to the width of observed space for each mode. See the typical assumptions diagram below for reference.
Typical modal capacity assumptions
The typical diagram below, inspired by work done by Nelson/Nygaard and Perkins+Will, explains the modal capacity assumptions graphically.