bikeway design | Transportation Research and Education Center

Transforming the School Commute: PSU Researchers Explore the Impact of Bike Buses

Jan 18, 2024

The trip to and from school is made by nearly every child in Oregon every school day. Bike and walk buses, organized groups of school children, parents, and ride/walk leaders, seek to encourage biking and walking to school. A new research project at Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) will gather information on bike buses nationwide, inspired by the success of Sam Balto's bike bus initiative at Alameda Elementary School in Portland, Oregon.

Balto, a physical education teacher, catapulted into the limelight in 2022 after establishing a weekly bike bus involving over 100 students commuting to school on two wheels. Its success and popularity prompted a broader initiative to understand and promote the benefits of bike and walk buses across the United States.

Researchers John MacArthur and Nathan McNeil, along with Evan Howington, a student in the Master of Urban and...

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...

Portland Bikeway Design Workshop Expands its Impact Across the Country

Nov 18, 2022

This article is about the 2022 impacts of our IBPI Comprehensive Bikeway Design workshop. See other IBPI trainings, including the faculty workshop "Integrating Bike-Ped Topics Into University Transportation Courses," at our bike/ped training home page.

If you're biking through Cincinnati, Ohio in the next couple of years and find yourself pedaling on a Portland-style neighborhood greenway or two-way protected bike lane, it might be because two engineers from the City of Cincinnati's Department of Transportation & Engineering—Joe Conway and Brian Goubeaux—attended our Comprehensive Bikeway Design Workshop in the summer of 2022 and brought some inspiration home.

The City of Cincinnati is in the process of updating its Bicycle Transportation Plan, adopted in 2010 and due for a refresh. Goubeaux, a senior engineer for the City, said that design strategies and practices he learned during the summer workshop will likely...

Better Block PSU Project Brings Safety Improvements to Hood River Middle School

Oct 26, 2022

Students at Hood River Middle School in Hood River, Oregon, will get some hands-on transportation experience next spring as they participate in the redesign of bike and pedestrian infrastructure around their school. Members of the (tentatively named) "Better Blocks Club," a new after-school extracurricular club, will get the chance to observe infrastructure, go on field trips by bike, learn urban planning best practices, and be involved in implementing a pilot safety project.

They'll be helping to plan and install new pop-up pedestrian and bike facilities at the intersection of May Street and 17th/18th Streets, a dogleg intersection adjacent to their school. The intersection design, which will include a protected intersection near the school and pop-up mobility lanes on the approaching streets, was created by PSU civil engineering students as part of the Better Block PSU program.

After the 6-month pilot demonstration is complete, the project will undergo community feedback and design modifications before infrastructure is permanently installed by the City of Hood River.

Left: Intersection of 17th/May St (Google Street View, 2022). Right: Map of the project location.

HOW DID THIS PROJECT COME ABOUT?

The project is led by Megan Ramey, Hood River County School District's Safe Routes to School...

Transportation Students Get Firsthand Look at Multimodal Travel in Denmark and Sweden

Sep 29, 2022

A group of nine transportation students traveled to Denmark and Sweden this past summer, to meet with planners and engineers and get a feel for on-the-ground transportation in Copenhagen and Stockholm. They explored the area by rail, foot, bike and boat, in between presentations and tours led by professionals.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC)'s associate director, Hau Hagedorn, and sustainable transportation program manager, John MacArthur, led the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) Study Abroad program. See photos from the trip.

In past years they've traveled to the Netherlands to experience the Dutch approach to cycling infrastructure and multimodal travel. This year, they decided to expand the mission. Copenhagen, like Amserdam, is sometimes referred to as the cycling capital of the world. Stockholm, along with some...

Congested Sidewalks: The Effects Of The Built Environment On E-Scooter Parking Compliance

Sep 27, 2022

Researchers Rob Hemphill, John MacArthur, Jennifer Dill and Philip Longenecker of Portland State University; Garima Desai of the University of California, Santa Cruz; Lillie Nie of the University of Southern California; and Abbey Ibarra of California State Polytechnic University-Pomona have published an article in the August 2022 issue of the Journal of Transport and Land Use.

The article, "Congested sidewalks: The effects of the built environment on e-scooter parking compliance," offers recommendations for policymakers and future research around the impacts of the built environment on electric scooter (e-scooter) parking.

With the proliferation of e-scooters in cities across the world, concerns have arisen about users parking them on sidewalks and in other public spaces. Research has looked at e-scooter parking compliance and compared compliance to other mobility devices, but until now, research had not yet examined the impacts of the built environment on parking compliance. Using a field observation dataset in Portland, Oregon, and novel GIS data, the authors attempt to understand the spatial distribution of e-scooter parking and the impact of built features on parking compliance.

The results of the study show that 76% of e-scooters observed fail at least one of Portland’s parking compliance requirements and 59% fail at least two criteria...

National Study Offers New Bike Count Models: Combining Traditional Counters And Emerging GPS Data

Jul 13, 2022

In order to make sure bicyclists' needs are considered when improving a transportation system, planners and engineers need to know how many people are biking, and where.

Traditional bicycle counters can provide data for limited sections of the bike network; often these counters are installed at important locations like trails or bridges. While limited in location, they count everyone who bikes by. Meanwhile, GPS & mobile data cover the entire transportation network, but that data only represents those travelers who are using smartphones or GPS. Combining the traditional location-based data sources with this new, crowdsourced data could offer better accuracy than any could provide alone.

"Knowing how many people are bicycling on a street is really important for a number of reasons. As just a few examples, bicycle volumes give you a way to understand safety data and determine crash rates. They provide insight into where and how bicycle trips are taking place, which can help plan for new or improved facilities," said Nathan McNeil of Portland State University.

Supported by a pooled fund grant administered by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), Dr. Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State University led a research project aimed at fusing traditional and...

Economic Study of 12 Active Transportation Projects in Oregon Finds Solid Returns on Investment

Jun 29, 2022

Active transportation investments offer many types of benefits related to safety, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, physical activity and the economy. Metro, Oregon’s regional government for the Portland metropolitan area, wants to better understand the role of these investments in building stronger communities in their region, and in implementing the Metro 2040 Growth Concept.

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Metro active transportation return on investment study

Led by Portland State University in partnership with Metro, the Active Transportation Return on Investment (ATROI) study looked at twelve projects constructed in the greater Portland region between 2001 and 2016. These twelve 2040 Catalyst Projects were evaluated to determine if active transportation investments had significant effects on...

Interview With Mia Birk, Founding Donor of the IBPI Active Transportation Scholarship at Portland State

Dec 14, 2021

Portland State University students interested in a career in advancing biking and walking can find financial support through two active transportation scholarships from the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at PSU. Since 2008, nineteen students have been awarded.

Mia Birk, the founding donor, is an independent consultant with 27 years of experience in helping to make cities more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. She served as the City of Portland's bicycle coordinator from 1993 to 1999, then as President and CEO of Alta Planning + Design until 2016. Her TED Talk makes the case for "Pedaling Towards a Healthier Planet," and her book, Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet, tells the story of her twenty-year crusade to...

PSU Masters Student Frank Boateng Appiah Works to Improve Bicycle Crossings at Unsignalized Intersections

Nov 16, 2021

An increasing trend in the number of bicycle crashes in the U.S since 2009 has been a major challenge to safety. A new PSU masters thesis in civil engineering offers insights: "Improving Bicycle Crossings at Unsignalized Intersections through Pavement Markings: Analysis of the City of Portland Innovative Strategy" by Frank Boateng Appiah of Portland State University.

For a deeper dive into this research, read BikePortland's coverage of the study. For more on the researcher, read our 2020 interview with Frank.

The City of Portland, Oregon has experimented with an innovative treatment to improve bicycle crossings at unsignalized intersections. This treatment, termed a high visibility cross-bike, was installed at crossings of neighborhood bicycle greenways with busy roadways. The marking is similar to a zebra-striped pedestrian crosswalk but with green pavement markings rather than white. Although the cross-bike marking does not currently require motorists to yield for bicycles waiting to cross the roadway, it was hypothesized that the presence of the marking...

HOW DID THIS PROJECT COME ABOUT?

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