Evaluation of the barrier-free rollability of paved surfaces in the city of Salzburg

While paved surfaces have advantages over asphalt or concrete surfaces from the perspective of infiltration and monument protection, they are viewed critically or rejected by stakeholders from the perspective of barrier-free rollability. In order to find solutions for this conflict of interest, a method for measuring and evaluating the barrier-free rollability of paved surfaces was developed at the Institute of Transportation at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna (Aigner, 2020; Batiajew, Hartwig and Pfaffenbichler, 2022). Here, the surface to be tested is traversed five times in each of two directions over a length of 5-10 meters using a standard wheelchair equipped with a smartphone to measure accelerations. During the travels, one person sits in the wheelchair while a second person pushes it at a constant speed. The accelerations are recorded using the Phyophox app from ETH Zurich. The measurement data is processed with Python scripts and analyzed using various statistical methods. As part of an extensive study in Vienna, the limit value of the mean vertical acceleration for barrier-free rollability was determined to be 2.5 m/s². Surfaces with a mean vertical acceleration above this value cannot be classified as barrier-free rollable. The proposed procedure includes the following contents and steps: 1. preparation of the test setup 2. driving on 4 test locations in the old town of Salzburg, which are to be determined by the client, with the standard wheelchair of the Institute of Transportation equipped for measurement by two employees of the Institute of Transportation (the measurements are carried out as described above without an additional driving on by test persons, who are dependent on a wheelchair) 3. summary of the results in tabular form, including photo and video documentation 4. summary of results and conclusions in a final report