The third and final phase of our bike share equity research project has been published, with new findings from a survey of bike share users.
Riders targeted for equity-focused outreach efforts—lower-income individuals and people of color—were most likely to cite cost savings or discounted membership as reasons why they joined, while higher-income and white users were more likely to cite the convenience of using bike share. Lower-income riders were also more...
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The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2018 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by April 2, 2018.
Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award at least $1 million under our general research grant in 2018 for 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
- Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure
- Advancing innovation and smart cities
- Developing data, models, and tools
Research projects must focus on transportation, with additional consideration given to projects that emphasize equity and diversity in their research and partnerships. We’re seeking projects that demonstrate a strong potential to move transportation research into practice, shape national and international conversations, and respond to the needs of practitioners and policymakers.
Priority is given to projects that are collaborative, multidisciplinary, multi-campus, and support the development of untenured-tenure-track transportation faculty.
Key Dates
- Abstracts due: April 2...
A NITC education grant funded a new course for planners, engineers, scientists and students to help improve their data processing workflow.
Liming Wang, an assistant professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning at Portland State University, is on a mission to simplify data processing. A NITC education grant supported his efforts to develop a new course: Introduction to Data Science (Aug 6 - 10, 2018). The course is designed to help students and professionals to improve their workflow for data-intensive research. The course covers how to collect data, clean them up, visualize, explore, model and eventually compile the data with findings in a report.
"I've pretty...
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Alex Bigazzi, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia
Alex Bigazzi, a former Post-Doctoral NITC researcher and student, received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Portland State University in 2014. Learn more about Alex:
NITC Researcher Profile | LinkedIn | UCB Faculty Profile
Read an article on his recent research on congestion pricing
Tell us about yourself:
My name is Alex Bigazzi and I am an assistant professor, joint-appointed in transportation engineering and planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. My main research areas are transportation emissions and air quality and active travel.
Why did you decide to attend Portland State University?
The original decision was driven almost entirely by location. I was living in Portland, decided to go back to school for a second...
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This page serves as a homebase for our coverage of the 2018 Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual conference. Check back here for ongoing updates, as well as our Twitter and Facebook.
- NITC GUIDE TO TRB (print-friendly PDF): our printable schedule of where all of our NITC researchers will be presenting at lectures, poster sessions, and workshops
- NITC RECEPTION AT TRB: Join us for transportation bingo, co-hosted with TransitCenter, on Monday, January 8th (7–10:30pm) nearby at Fado Irish Pub
- NITC STUDENT AWARD AT CUTC BANQUET: We’ll be celebrating our 2017 NITC “Student of the Year”, Jordan Preston of Oregon Tech at the annual CUTC Banquet. She has been working as a graduate research assistant...
In the last decade there has been a national trend toward projects that involve roadway space reallocation across modes. "Road Diets," in which one or more travel lanes are removed to make space for wider and safer bicycle and pedestrian space, is a common type of roadway reallocation.
A new NITC report by Miguel Figliozzi and Travis Glick of Portland State University offers a new methodology for doing before-and-after studies of these projects using high-resolution transit data. The data used in this project was supplied by TriMet, the transit provider for the Portland, Oregon metropolitan region.
Typically, before-and-after studies of roadway changes have used data on vehicle speeds to determine effects of change, without considering transit. By using datasets from transit providers, researchers can measure transit and also general traffic speed, so the data serve both purposes.
"This is a new methodology; something that no one...
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TREC is searching for a transportation data program manager to administer our Portal Program.
The Portal Program Administrator will work on a variety of transportation data projects that require data synthesis, analysis, presentation and visualization.
This individual will work closely with the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), PORTAL (the Portland Region transportation data archive), and bike-ped data to develop requirements and recommendations on improving the usability of the Portland regional transportation, and bicycle and pedestrian data to help meet the needs of transportation agency end-users.
The PORTAL transportation data archive contains freeway (speed, count, travel time), arterial (travel time, traffic signal, bicycle count, pedestrian push button), transit, incident, weigh-in-motion and weather data. The BikePed Portal is the national archive for bicycle and pedestrian count data.
For more information and to apply, visit the Portland State University job posting or view the full...
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Our National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research program has awarded grant funding for a new series of Small Starts projects.
Small Starts grants assist researchers who are interested in transportation but have not yet had an opportunity to undertake a small project—$15,000 in funding or less—that supports NITC's theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation choices to foster livable communities.
The latest projects selected by NITC's executive committee support that theme in exploring livable streets, multimodal safety and transportation efficiency.
The six newly funded projects are:
- Is There a "Buy Local" Case for Lower Travel Speeds? Testing Differences in Driver Recognition of Local Versus National Retail at Different Travel Speeds—Jonathan Bean and Arlie Adkins, University of Arizona (Full Proposal)
- How Will Autonomous Vehicles Change Local Government Budgeting and Finance? A Case Study of Solid Waste, Drop-off/Pick-up Zones, and Parking—Benjamin Clark, University of Oregon (...
Livability encompasses several aspects of community, including safe, walkable neighborhoods; quality transit service and healthy green spaces. Making these types of benefits more available to underserved and marginalized populations is a key component of TREC's research focus. With the support of the Ann Niles Active Transportation Lecture Endowment, every year we host leaders who have made great strides in advocating for health, safety, and bicycle and pedestrian access.
For our 4th annual Ann Niles Lecture we've invited Tamika Butler – Executive Director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust. In her current role she grows healthier, safer, and stronger communities through the creation of urban parks and community gardens—addressing the critical lack of green and recreational spaces in greater Los Angeles' underserved neighborhoods. Prior to this, Butler was the the executive director of the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition, bringing energy and passion to the quest for better bicycle access.
Through our programs, including the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) and...
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Prepared by TREC, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has just released a Manual on Pedestrian and Bicycle Connections to Transit.
TREC Director Jennifer Dill and TREC researcher Nathan McNeil worked with the FTA to develop the manual, a guidebook to creating a robust network for active transportation and transit users.
From defining "access sheds" to linking up transit and bike share, the newly published manual is a rich resource for planners and engineers looking to boost their city's bicycle and pedestrian transit access.
Dill and McNeil built the manual with a special...
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