Towards Virtual Reality Supported Participatory Infrastructure Planning Processes

Urban planners aim to involve citizens into their design processes, e.g., the planning of new traffic infrastructure, to better understand citizens’ needs and wishes, foster acceptance for new infrastructure, and reduce the risk and cost of planning mistakes early on. Using VR technologies has been proposed as a viable solution to facilitate this involvement, as in comparison VR models are easy to design, implement, and evaluate. Our research focuses on whether citizens behave safely in a VR based traffic infrastructure simulation. We conducted a VR study using 360° videos to evaluate citizens' estimation of an approaching vehicle’s speed and their decisions whether to cross a road in front of it. Preliminary results indicate that citizens are unable to correctly name speeds of approaching vehicles, crossing decisions were safe for a slim majority at slow speeds (30 kph) and deteriorated with higher speed s. At 60+ kph the distance to the vehicle was smaller than the required stopping sight distance in almost all evaluations.