Upcoming Events | Transportation Research and Education Center

PSU Transportation Seminar: Shifting Gears: Toward a New Way of Thinking About Transportation

Friday, April 26, 2024, 11:30am to 12:30pm PDT

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. We've opened up PSU Transportation Seminars to other days of the week, but the format is the same: Feel free to bring your lunch! If you can't join us in person, you can always watch online via Zoom.

THE TOPIC

The transportation system in the U.S. has been shaped by a core set of ideas that are embedded in professional practice. These ideas – freedom, speed, mobility, vehicles, capacity, hierarchy, separation, control, and technology – have produced a system in which most people are dependent on driving, with all the negative consequences that entails. Shifting to a system that offers people choices about their daily travel requires a shift in thinking on the part of the transportation profession. In this talk, I take a critical look at the way of thinking that, for the last century, has shaped our transportation system and consider the ways in which that thinking is – and is not – shifting.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

Participants will recognize limitations of the existing US transportation system.
Participants will learn key concepts shaping the transportation system.
Participants will gain strategies for reducing automobile dependence.

SPEAKER

...

Visiting Scholar Presentation: Discourse and Sustainable Urban Mobility

Thursday, May 2, 2024, 2:30pm to 4:30pm PDT

Join us in person Thursday, May 2 for a seminar with visiting scholar Robin Hickman of University College London.

Note: The location has changed to Urban Center 710.

THE TOPIC

The transport systems, the shape of the built environment and the use of street spaces in contemporary cities and urban areas are a manifestation of what is regarded as ‘normal’ in different contexts. This reflects what counts as ‘true’ for transport and travel behaviours in particular contexts.

In many cities, it is normalised to consume ever increasing levels of individual mobility, with travel hugely dominated by car, yet for this to be highly problematic in environmental and social terms. Elsewhere, there may be more progressive approaches taken by institutions, or perhaps more critical debate and contestation by the public and other actors. The current order, in transport planning, in terms of the procedures available, the projects developed, and the travel behaviours that result, is simply the sorting of priorities.

This presentation seeks to develop an approach that utilises discourse analysis within transport planning, to help understand the different possibilities that might be on offer for transport strategies and also the reaction to new projects by the public. There are two key stages (Hickman, forthcoming 2024):

first, using discourse analysis, there is assessment of concepts such as...

PSU Transportation Seminar: Oregon in Motion: Shaping Communities Through State Transportation Legislation

Friday, May 3, 2024, 11:30am to 12:30pm PDT

THE TOPIC

About every eight years, the Oregon state legislature passes a large state transportation funding package. Transportation funding packages in Oregon have historically included funding mechanisms such as the gas tax, program areas such as Safe Routes to School, projects such as freeway widenings, and transparency and accountability measures such as establishing new reporting requirements and advisory committees. The way this legislation is developed and who has a seat at the table highly influences package contents and the public and political support needed for its passage. In this presentation, I will provide highlights from my recently published report, Oregon in Motion (PDF), which covers the development, content, and impacts of HB 2017 - Oregon's most recent transportation package - and previews what is to come with the next package anticipated for 2025.

KEY LEARNING...

PSU Transportation Seminar: Forest Service Engineering, Lessons and Opportunities

Friday, May 17, 2024, 11:30am to 12:30pm PDT

THE TOPIC

Working in the Forest Service Engineering has different challenges and benefits than other common organizations for Civil Engineers or Transportation Planners. This presentation should provide a perspective on how we utilize dynamic tensions to reach consensus, how we apply lessons learned across disciplines and agencies, and share opportunities for growth and learning.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

An introduction to Forest Service, the engineering done in the agency and how history shapes today's work.
Transportation Planning across landscapes, planning for access absent residents/permanent job sites.
Resolving conflict from competing goals and missions.

SPEAKER

Joe Totten, Assistant Regional Transportation Engineer/Shared Roads Systems Specialist, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service Region 6

Joe Totten is an engineer with USDA-Forest Service. He has worked in municipal government, state government, a transit...

PSU Transportation Seminar: Streets are for People! Livable Streets 2.0 and Five Decades of the Conflict, Power and Promise of our Streets

Friday, May 31, 2024, 11:30am to 12:30pm PDT

THE TOPIC

Streets constitute the majority of our urban public spaces, yet we struggle everyday with how they should be designed and operated for travel, safety, and livability.

In 1969, when Dr. Bruce Appleyard was 4 years old, he was hit by a car and nearly killed. Around that time his father, Donald Appleyard, started work on what would become Livable Streets, published in 1981 – a ground-breaking and seminal work, the product of more than a decade of rigorous research and thoughtful analysis that would uncover the ill effects of traffic and laying out the seminal arguments that streets are for people.

On September 23, 1982, a year after Livable Streets was published, Donald Appleyard was killed by a speeding, drunk driver in Athens, Greece—it was never reprinted. And so it goes, one of the most important books on street safety and livability was itself bookended by two horrific events of traffic violence. In 2021, Dr. Bruce Appleyard published an updated version,...

Webinar: Building Capacity in Gateway Communities through the GNAR Academy

Wednesday, June 12, 2024, 10:00am to 11:00am PDT

OVERVIEW

Small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities across the West are experiencing rapid growth and increased tourism. As we have documented via our prior NITC-funded research, this has created a range of big city challenges for these “gateway communities,” particularly in the form of interconnected transportation, land use, and housing issues. Seeking to help gateway communities better prepare for and respond to their transportation and planning challenges, the Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) Initiative team translated the findings from our research on planning and development challenges in gateway communities into an online learning program.

This program, the "GNAR Academy Fundamentals: Foundations for Planning and Collaboration in Gateway Communities and Regions" includes seven modules, each of which highlights key skills for addressing transportation and planning issues in gateway communities. This Fundamentals course will be an entry point for the rest of the GNAR Academy, which is currently in development.

In this webinar, we will introduce the GNAR Academy and Fundamentals course, explain how the course was developed, and share how we anticipate the course will result in improved transportation, planning, and development decisions in gateway communities and regions...