Biometrics in roadway design: incorporating the subliminal human experience

Numerous tools are available to transportation planners and designers to understand how people use and navigate roadways while driving. Innovations in biometric technology present new methods to tap collective wisdom and measure visual attention and emotion elicited by urban elements, like streets. Photos and videos were collected during Memorial Drive’s seasonal road closure in Cambridge, Massachusetts to measure these responses. We found a discrepancy between car-centered urban design and human-centered urban design, offering new methodological approaches to advance urban research, policy, and planning.