portland state university | Transportation Research and Education Center

PSU Transportation Students Envision "Living Streets," Car-Free Corridors for Downtown Portland

Mar 30, 2023

In the 1970's, Portland had a dream: to create a "pleasurable human environment" by giving space to people rather than cars. Several car-free areas were identified in the city's ambitious 1972 Downtown Plan, approved by city council at the time.

Four Portland State University (PSU) students took that dream a little further this year. In the Fall 2022 term, Cameron Bennett, Owen Christofferson, Emily D’Antonio and Aidan Simpson created a Downtown Portland Living Streets Plan centered around a new street typology for Portland: Living Streets.

Like the public plazas common in cities outside the US, living streets are defined by slow speeds and shared space. But unlike European old towns, Dutch Woonerfs or Barcelona's Superblocks, Living Streets were designed specifically with Portland in mind. Bennett describes them as "a pedestrian-focused equivalent to the neighborhood greenways in Portland: Not explicitly car-free, but kind of...

New LiDAR System Pinpoints Pedestrian Behavior to Improve Efficiency and Safety at Intersections

Mar 06, 2023

Pedestrian safety is critical to improving walkability in cities. To that end, NITC researchers have developed a system for collecting pedestrian behavior data using LiDAR sensors. Tested at two intersections in Texas and soon to be tested at another in Salt Lake City, Utah, the new software created by a multi-university research team is able to reliably observe pedestrian behavior and can help reduce conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles at signalized intersections. The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is already working on implementing this new system to improve data collection at intersections.

Learn more in a free webinar May 18.

The LiDAR system can especially improve multimodal travel at intersections with permissive left turns, which are indicated by a flashing yellow arrow. Previous research has shown that where a flashing yellow arrow, or FYA, is present, cars searching for a gap in traffic may not look for pedestrians. To remove the risk to people walking, some signals are programmed to turn off the FYA when a walk button is pushed. But...

TREC Associate Director Will Travel to Seek Opportunities for PSU's New Pacific Islander & Asian American Studies Program

Feb 23, 2023

Hau Hagedorn, associate director of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University, is part of an interdisciplinary team of educators who will travel to Vietnam and Hawaii this year looking for new curriculum, research and study abroad opportunities.

After more than a decade of organization and effort, PSU is establishing a Pacific Islander & Asian American (PIAA) Studies Program, and now a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation is supporting the exploratory trip by Hagedorn and two co-leaders—Marie Lo, professor and chair of English, and Betty Izumi, professor of public health and interim associate dean for students and alumni affairs in OHSU-PSU's School of Public Health—who each bring different perspectives and academic backgrounds to the work. Read more about the project in a PSU news story by Cristina Rojas, Communications Manager of PSU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Grant Makes Exploratory Trips To Vietnam, Hawaii Possible For Piaa Studies.

"This grant provides an opportunity to explore the influence of colonialism on transportation and mobility. The unintended...

PSU Researchers Will Work With PBOT To Evaluate New 122nd Avenue BIL Project

Feb 23, 2023

Portland State University transportation researchers will partner with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to evaluate a new project on 122nd Avenue in Portland, Oregon.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) established the "Safe Streets and Roads for All" program to provide $5-6 billion in funding to support regional, local, and Tribal initiatives to prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries. On Feb. 1, 2023, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $800 million in grant awards for 510 communities through the first round of funding for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant program.

See the full list of awarded projects here.

PBOT was awarded $20 million to make 122nd Avenue safer for all road users, and around $250,000 of that will go toward a research project to evaluate the effectiveness of the new safety treatments. The project will employ low-cost, high-benefit treatments on 5.5 miles of 122nd Avenue in...

Two Portland State Students Win WTS Transportation Scholarships

Feb 21, 2023

Each year, the Portland Chapter of WTS bestows scholarships to assist exceptional women in their educational pursuits in the field of transportation. The scholarships are competitive and based on the applicant’s specific goals, academic achievements, and transportation related activities. Two of the five scholarship winners this year are Portland State University transportation students in the Masters of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program. Jamie Arnau and Dawn Walter were presented with their awards at the annual WTS Winter Gala on January 24, 2023.

Jamie Arnau: Helene M Overly Scholarship

Jamie.jpeg

Jamie Arnau is a second-year MURP student studying urban design. She is passionate about public space design, equity, and improving walking and transit experiences for all. She is currently a transportation planning...

Student Spotlight: Christian Galiza, Portland State University

Jan 03, 2023

Christian Galiza is a senior in civil engineering. He is the Vice President of Communications for Portland State University's Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) student chapter, Students in Transportation Engineering & Planning (ITE-STEP), and also works as a structural engineering intern for Eclipse Engineering. He is the recipient of an ITE Regional Travel Scholarship to attend the 2022 ITE Western District Annual Meeting in Palm Springs, CA. He is also a 2022/23 National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) scholar. Christian enjoys transportation because it's fascinating to think about the relationship between building sustainable infrastructure and transportation planning and its impact on how people move every day.

Connect with Christian on LinkedIn.

Tell us about yourself?

I am originally from the beautiful island of Oahu, Hawaii, and I have been working through the B.S. Civil Engineering program at Portland State University. My transportation interests include Complete Streets, safety, and issues involving transportation equity. In January 2023, I’m excited to embark on an engineering internship with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) in their Traffic Operations section...

Moving From Cars To People: A Comic About Transportation and Land Use

Jan 03, 2023

A new transportation comic, "Moving From Cars To People (PDF)," offers a succinct and fun introduction to a complicated topic: namely, how the built environment in the United States came to be designed for cars and what we can do about it.

Want a physical copy? Here are a few ways to get one:

Request a free copy from our limited print run (first come, first served)
Order a copy for just the cost of printing & shipping;
Print one yourself at any local printer, with our high-res print-...

Assessing The Perception Of E-Scooters As A Practical And Equitable First-Mile/Last-Mile Solution

Dec 22, 2022

Portland State University graduate Mike McQueen, who earned his masters in civil engineering in 2020 and now works at ICF as a transportation data specialist and engineer, has published an article in the November 2022 issue of Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.

The article, "Assessing the perception of E-scooters as a practical and equitable first-mile/last-mile solution," is a revised version of McQueen's masters thesis, "Comparing the Promise and Reality of E-Scooters: a Critical Assessment of Equity Improvements and Mode-Shift," which is available for download on PDX Scholar. The article updates the statistical model used to a mixed multinomial (MMNL) regression model, which allows for better control of random variations in taste among respondents, and makes findings about the influence of travel time and cost on mode choice more robust. McQueen presented this research during a poster session at the TRB Conference on Advancing Transportation Equity (CATE) conference in September 2021.

"This research shows that e-scooter systems in their current form are not organically leading to substantial mode shift from automobile travel at a regional scale, nor are they leading to increased...

Sangwan Lee of Portland State University Investigates Transportation Mode Choice in the Era of Autonomous Vehicles

Dec 21, 2022

New mobility technologies, such as shared mobility services and autonomous vehicles (AVs), continue to evolve. How do travelers decide whether to adopt new transportation modes or continue to use conventional modes? "Transportation Mode Choice Behavior in the Era of Autonomous Vehicles: The Application of Discrete Choice Modeling and Machine Learning" is a 2022 dissertation by Sangwan Lee of Portland State University which uses machine learning to examine this question.

Lee, who earned his PhD from the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning in 2022 working with faculty advisor Liming Wang, is now a research associate working in employment research at LX Spatial Information Research Institute, Korea Land and Geospatial Informatix Corporation in Jeonju, South Korea. He is currently working on several research topics, including autonomous logistics.

"I'm excited about the next chapter of my work in employment research because I am joining research projects about autonomous vehicles," Lee said.

Lee's dissertation consists of three papers. The first examines future market shares of each available mode of transportation in the era of AVs, factors influencing mode choice behaviors, and their marginal effects using a mixed...

PSU Masters Student Cameron Bennett Receives Second Eisenhower Fellowship

Dec 21, 2022

We are proud to acknowledge Portland State University engineering masters student Cameron Bennett, who has been awarded a Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship for the second year in a row. Bennett, who won his first Eisenhower Fellowship last year, will receive another presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation at this year's annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). He is also being honored as the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) Masters Student of the Year.

Connect with Cameron on LinkedIn.

During his master's program, Cameron has served two terms as President of the Institute of Transportation Engineers student chapter at Portland State, ITE-STEP (Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning). In 2022, the student group won the ITE Student Chapter Momentum Award. He has also received a National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) scholarship and a 2021 Walter H....

Jamie Arnau: Helene M Overly Scholarship

Pages