Portland State University

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. Four NITC students were awarded WTS Portland scholarships for the 2019/2020 academic year:

Briana Orr, Portland State University

Briana Orr is a student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at Portland State University. In addition, Briana is a Capital Project Planner at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT). As a part of the Central City in Motion team, Briana advances PBOT's effort to implement pedestrian crossings, transit lanes, and bikeways in the city’s core. Prior to PBOT, Briana worked in Seattle as Cascade Bicycle Club’s Communication Manager, and secured seed funding for bike share in Eugene as the University of Oregon’s first professional Bike Coordinator.

Corrie Parrish, University of Oregon

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Photo by Cait McCusker

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2020 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by March 23, 2020.

Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award up to $1,000,000 to research projects that support NITC’s theme: improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. Our theme includes a few key topics:

Increasing access to opportunities.

Well-connected regions and communities can improve social equity by providing access to jobs, services, recreation, and social opportunities. Research should examine barriers to access, including the connections between transportation, land use, and housing. It should look at how to overcome these barriers and improve accessibility, affordability, and equity in our communities.

Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure.

Improved mobility requires a range of options for moving people and goods. As concepts of mobility evolve, research is needed to understand how people and firms make mode choices so that we can design better multi-modal systems. Research should examine how...

It's been nine years since we first started offering our transportation study abroad course in the Netherlands, and the program is still going strong. This year we're offering two versions of the course - one geared towards students and another focused on active professionals:

• Active Transportation in the Netherlands: a One-Week Course for Professionals (June 21 - 27, 2020)
• Sustainable Transportation in the Netherlands: a Two-Week Course for Students (June 21 - July 4, 2020)

These courses create an immersive experience to explore the Dutch approach to cycling, transit, innovative mobility and land use. Students and professionals will develop a broader understanding of sustainable transportation issues and expand their toolkit for context-sensitive solutions.

Today, the Netherlands is the safest place in the world to operate a bicycle, based on injury and fatality rates per miles traveled. But in 1967, Amsterdam’s chief inspector of traffic police called bicycling in the Netherlands "tantamount to attempting suicide." In just five decades, the Dutch built a bicycle infrastructure that is the envy of the rest of the world. How did they do it?...

• Download the Final Report (PDF)
• Download the Project Brief (PDF)
• Watch the October 8, 2019 webinar with the researchers or view the presentation slides
• This research is also featured in a May 2019 addendum to NACTO's Urban Bikeway Design Guide:...