Bycicle Underpasses by United Academics

Pieter Jan M. Stallen & Henk Jelle Zandbergen

Article

Leiden University

WORK IN PROGRESS DESIGNING SUBJECTIVE (AND OBJECTIVE) SAFETY OF BICYCLE UNDERPASSES:

The Netherlands is well known for its exceptionally high frequency of bicycle rides/person (with Denmark as a solid second), whether for shopping, commuting (commonly across distances up to 7 km) or recreational purposes. Well over 80% of the population of the Netherlands have at least one bike. For a number of reasons the future of bicycle riding remains shiny. Beyond the happy bike riding citizens, policy makers also love the bike as it reduces both obesity and pollution. Dutch cities regularly compete for the title of Bike-City of the Year. To that end, various efforts are spent to promote and facilitate bicycle use, e.g. by priority green at traffic lights and by the creation of bicycle freeways. However, one obstacle has not yet received much attention: bicycle underpasses.

early half of the riding public, women more often than men, avoid using underpasses at night. Admittedly, this number is likely to be less dramatic for new underpasses which are meeting stricter standards such as unrestricted lines of sight throughout the entire tunnel and adequate transitions of lighting at either end. Yet underpasses have qualities that make them inherently unattractive. Typically, an underpass needs to be seen as the best option for getting from A to B to everybody. It can achieve that end only at the expense of personal costs. Underpasses per se impose behavioral constraints by offering no exits within them, and they force uniformity upon users because everyone without exception has to proceed in the same direction.

The resulting high imbalance of predictability between self and some supposedly hidden other (imbalance of power) can fuel feelings of insecurity. To offset these psychological drawbacks several ideas are practiced nowadays in building underpasses, ranging from costeffective graffiti-painting by members of the community to more expensive interactively illuminated walls. Most of these techniques aim at affecting sensory perception, whether via conscious or unconscious routes. Although this may successfully alter impressions of an underpassâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for users, it is less likely that this type of positive stimulation will also take the worrying individual sufficiently away from his particular (in this case, underpass-related) negative sentiment (see, e.g., Josephson,

Singer and Salovey, 1996). A stronger, that is, more demanding interference is probably needed. Research by Van Dillen and Koole (2008) suggest that the job could be done by active involvement of working memory. In a series of experiments they showed that, after viewing negative pictures, people report less negative moods when complex math rather than simple or no math problems had to be

be the most effective way to reduce negative moods when the source of the negative emotion itself remains intact, such as in the event of problematic relationships, or difficulties at work. In general, distraction is no substitute for problem solving. But in situations where the particular person-context interaction is the very source of the negative effect, distraction may lead to substantive distance from the

solved before giving their rating. Moreover, the effect of math problem solving on negative moods was stronger for unannounced than announced math problems, which fits particularly well with a working memory account: performing simple or predictable tasks means reliance on more habitual processes which typically leave more room for attention to be spent on other, mood-related information. Finally, solving math problems had a stronger moderating impact on negative mood when participants had viewed strongly rather than mildly negative pictures. It should be noted that the inhibition of negative feelings by cognitive distraction is different from the active suppression of emotional thoughts. Research has shown that when people were distracted in the above mentioned ways, their moods were not deteriorated again by subsequent rumination. It should also be noted that distraction will not necessarily be the optimal emotion regulation strategy under all circumstances. In particular, it may not

feeling, with repeated distraction probably allowing the person to acquire a significantly different appreciation of the person-context interaction. These observations, we believe, are highly relevant to a variety of situations in the field. The socio-technical architecture of bicycle underpasses is certainly one of them. Based upon the above-presented cognitive account of emotion-processing we expect that people afraid of bicycle underpasses may structurally benefit from ways that actively involve their working memory when passing through. PLEASantPASS® has been developed by the first author with this objective in mind (or, to be honest, with having it ‘somewhat’ in mind). Basically it is a play of Question & Answer: briefly before the person enters the passageway Question X (about subject X) is posed upon a display; inside the passageway the user will see additional information upon a screen, or hear about X (sounds lasting no more than a few seconds) from speakers; finally, when leav-

ing the passageway behind, the Answer will appear upon a second display.1 Figure 1 illustrates a possible sequence of spatial cues when PLEASantPASS® is operating in audio mode. New Q&A-combinations will be displayed several times each hour in order to be responsive to a wide range of potential user interests, and to avoid exposure to ‘old’ information. Via the corresponding website, users themselves will also be offered the opportunity to submit Q&A’s for display. User-access to screens will be made dependent upon frequency of tunnel-use as determined by Blue Tooth or RFID counts.2 Note that this means showing full respect for individual freedom of choice as the individual can only participate after he himself has explicitly switched on his Blue Tooth or has collected the RFIDtag. Together, the various socio-techniques not only considerably heighten the attention-value of the first stimulus (the Question), they will also stimulate social cohesion. It will be the more frequent users, those living in the nearby neighborhoods, who will become most active in this respect. As such, it may become one of the very means that will create ‘defensible space’ (Oscar Newman; see Crowe, 2000), with its consistent positive effects on subjective and

objective safety in this part of the public domain: underpasses. From the above it can be inferred that we expect to see several positive effects to result from applying PLEASantPASS® to underpasses, including the aesthetic and on subjective safety (fear of harassment, etc.). With Van Dillen and Koole we believe that they will be mediated by attention and work-

ing memory processes. Both these expectations and beliefs should be put to empirical test in order to get a better estimate of the size of these effects in real life settings like bicycle underpasses. We plan to do this in two steps. First, we will design a laboratory experiment with two groups of female respondents looking at a brief movie on screen showing, 1 A short animation in Dutch, English, German and from a cyclist’s perspective, the road to, the Danish is showed at www.pleasantpass.com in the entrance of, and the passing through of an menu top right. Click on ‘Tunnel van de Toekomst / underpass at dusk. One group will be viewOss’ [Full English version of website will be on line ing the underpass in normal mode and one by august 10th 2011] in PLEASantPASS® mode. Respondents’ in2 Patent protection. structions will be such that it will be easy to

imagine themselves cycling through the underpass. The most important measure will be the group comparison of perceived safety at the moment the underpass has been passed, with fear of underpasses (state anxiety) as covariate. Second, PLEASantPASS® will be mounted in one of the 3 bicycle underpasses of the N329-“Road of the Future” in Oss/ Netherlands (completion planned by spring 2013). This offers opportunities to measure attitudes of various (cycling) residents towards crossing the N329 both before and af-

ter its reconstruction. Before getting our hands on these results, quite some time will have passed. We welcome any further practical and theoretical ideas in the meantime.

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Pieter Jan Stallen is a professor at the Cognitive Psychology Department at Leiden University (the Netherlands). His present research interests focus on how affect (mood, value) and social factors affect the auditory perception of environmental sounds, such as when exposed to airplanes. Beside this interest in aversive sides of sound in the public domain he is also interested in the opposite: how could one make us of environmental sounds in attractive ways? PLEASantPASS® is one of his answers ( http://www.pleasantpass.com )

Henk Jelle Zandbergen is a cognitive psychologist who is passionate about music. His interest in music found his way into his studies : Henk Jelle wrote his thesis on how emotions affect judgments about loudness. His work at PLEASANTPASS allows him to combine all his passions in coming up with new audiovisual applications and products that affect how people behave and feel in public spaces. Henk Jelle also works as a researcher at the Stichting Landelijke Expertisegroep Veiligheidspercepties, a professional network that focuses on how to influence people’s safety perceptions.

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