CHRIS CHERRY: UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE

Ongoing Projects:

The Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety: I am an Associate Director for the CPBS University Transportation Center. This center started in 2023 and is led by University of New Mexico and includes partners at University of Tennessee, University of Wisconsin, UC Berkeley, and San Diego State University. Year one projects include estimating impacts large vehicles and arterials on pedestrian safety. Second year projects will focus on micromobility safety.
COVID-19 Impacts on Transit, Scooter, and Bikeshare Ridership: Our main research initiative will be to survey riders of shared mobility systems in Portland, Oregon and Nashville, Tennessee as we proceed through the COVID-19 crisis. We will survey transit riders, bike share users, and scooter share users. We are hopeful that the findings will lend national insight into how riders decide to return to transit.
The ME-Bike Study: Current practices of tracking e-bike data rely on memory recall and self-reporting from the user. Our approach will instead leverage smartphones to conduct ad-hoc travel surveys to supplement passive data collection and, using machine learning algorithms, create the largest and richest dataset to support the growth of e-bike use as a transportation option.
Understanding micromobility safety behavior and standardizing safety metrics for transportation system integration: The purpose of this study is to accelerate shared learning around micromobility safety impacts and to fast-track improvements to injury surveillance of emerging modes such as e-scooters and related micromobility devices (e-bikes, electric skateboards, hoverboards, etc.) used on and around city streets, etc. The primary aim will be vehicles in shared mobility systems. Specific tasks will include: Establish available data sources to support safety evaluations across multiple geographies. Engage stakeholders, examine current practices, and identify approaches to enhance injury surveillance systems. Development and deployment of a behavior-oriented survey instrument. Formulate data structure for continuous tracking and analysis of micromobility sharing safety.
Integrating Spatial Safety Data into Transportation Planning Processes: One of the key steps that is usually neglected in the transportation planning process is safety evaluation of the proposed alternatives, or safety is assessed as a separate post-process. Integrating safety into the planning process will contribute to safe systems analysis, explicitly including safety outcomes with planning models and alternative planning scenarios. In this project, we will use the address of individuals who were involved in traffic crashes (i.e., home-based approach; HBA) instead of the location of the crashes (i.e., location-based approach; LBA) to evaluate road safety.

Selected Recent Publications (See my Google Scholar here)

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