Prof. Kelly Clifton had planned for students in her “Theories And Methods Of Travel Behavior” course to give final presentations March 11. But the course had just wrapped up a unit on public policy.
Clifton, a TREC researcher, instead offered a rare opportunity: the class spent its final course meeting grilling U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, Oregon’s senior representative and a major player in transportation policy.
DeFazio used the session to field questions about his work on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and to get ideas for solving problems before the committee from some of the country’s most respected transportation students.
Topics included alternatives to the gasoline tax, health, performance measures and behavior modification. Around 25 students attended, including some from outside the travel behavior course.
As the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, DeFazio looks for ways to deal with deteriorating infrastructure. Faced with questions on the intersections between transportation and disciplines such as health and education, DeFazio acknowledged how much struggles in one area affect others.
“There’s a whole host of things we’re not investing in,” DeFazio said. If properly funded, he said, programs such as Safe Routes to School can improve all the disciplines they touch.
But the federal...
To be published later this spring is some of the first bicycle-focused research into shared space, a controversial urban design approach pioneered in the Netherlands in the 1990s.
Allison Duncan, a PhD candidate in urban studies & planning at Portland State University, earned a NITC dissertation fellowship in 2014 and used the research grant to study shared space intersections in the United Kingdom.
Shared space designs have recently been adopted at a handful of sites in the UK and others scattered across Europe, Australia and New Zealand. They are characterized by a lack of physical guidelines such as curbs, road surface markings and traffic signs to define who has the right-of-way.
The idea is for pedestrians, cars and bicycles to mingle in a common zone and use eye contact and natural communication to make sure no one gets hurt.
“Cyclists and pedestrians are supposed to be able to treat it more like a plaza and just cross where they want to, and drivers are supposed to yield,” Duncan said.
As a street design scheme, shared space isn’t exactly new. It’s more or less the way all streets were designed until the advent of cars, and is still the norm in many Asian countries where cars share the roads with a crowd of two- and three-wheeled...
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To help maximize the US Department of Transportation’s commitment to livable communities, NITC has opened a second round of funding for the Transportation for Livable Communities Pooled-Fund Research program.
This program gives regional and local agencies more opportunity to be invested in research with a national impact. Through the program, cities, counties, MPOs and other regional or local agencies can pool research dollars to leverage NITC funds for a single project.
We are currently seeking partners to identify research needs. In the second round of Pooled-Fund Research, partnering agencies will work with NITC staff to develop a clear problem statement.
Once the research problem statement is identified, NITC will issue a request for proposals (RFP) to faculty and investigators at our partner universities.
Who can submit?
Any agency such as a city, metropolitan planning organization, county, transit agency, etc. can submit research problem statements relating to NITC’s theme of livability, incorporating safety and environmental sustainability. NITC expects that the agency or group of agencies submitting a problem statement will pool funds to contribute to half the cost of the project and be a member of the technical advisory committee.
We are asking that agency partners provide non-federal dollars that can be used to match the NITC...
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The Federal Transit Administration has announced a $945,000 grant for a Portland State University project to help transportation agencies respond to regional emergencies. The project is led by TREC, with partners TriMet, the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management and Metro.
The announcement came as part of $29 million in grants through the FTA’s Innovative Safety, Resiliency, and All-Hazards Emergency Response and Recovery Demonstration program. The grants will help transit agencies improve safety, better withstand natural disasters, and respond more effectively to emergencies. A list of selected projects is available online.
The TREC project will develop and test a transportation demand management system that uses social media and intelligent transportation systems for large-scale emergency response and recovery. While managing demand is a cornerstone of campaigns to reduce private vehicle trips, it is often absent from emergency recovery plans, said project lead John MacArthur of TREC.
“This looks at how transit can be a reliable backbone to keep a city functioning,” MacArthur said. “That means during the response period, but also during recovery, which can last a long time.”
Agency partners expressed enthusiasm for the collaborative approach to an issue they all face.
“TriMet provides shelter buses for small-scale...
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Students from area high schools explored the sustainable transportation research Portland State University is known for during tours Feb. 11-12. The tours, led by the researchers themselves, were part of the Portland State High School Innovation Challenge competition.
Groups from Grant and Franklin high schools in Portland heard from TREC researchers and got behind-the-scenes looks at the technology behind transportation systems. John MacArthur, Sirisha Kothuri, Alex Bigazzi, Miguel Figliozzi and Krista Nordback shared their research and insights.
Student teams from nine teams will now work on proposals to solve a problem related to this year’s theme, smart cities. The teams work with Portland State student mentors majoring in engineering or computer science. Teams will compete and present their final projects before judges in early April.
Now in its third year, the competition was designed to provide a first look at engineering for high school students, particularly those who previously hadn’t considered the field. The competition focuses on the ways engineering and design can help people and solve real-world problems.
Participants in...
When Portland State University student Marisa DeMull signed up for the summer 2014 study abroad course in the Netherlands, she wasn't necessarily looking for a new major. A civil engineering student, DeMull thought the summer program just sounded like a great way to get course credit.
DeMull learned that she could get six credits for the two-week program and applied immediately, a week from the deadline.
“I tried spreading the word. It’s the best program, and so few people really know about it, which is unfortunate,” DeMull said.
- Applications for the 2015 program are due April 1. IBPI scholarships are due March 4.
After two weeks in Delft and a series of lectures, bike tours, and eye-opening conversations, the PSU senior returned home to Portland State and declared a change in her program of study: she would now focus on transportation, a sub-field within civil engineering.
"Until this trip, I didn't really know that was a career choice," DeMull said. "I love riding bikes, but to design bike routes for a living? I met all these engineers who are completely devoted to bicycles, who just live and breathe it."
Practitioners give daily lectures to the students in the course, and...
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She will spend three months in Lisbon, Portugal starting in January 2016, where she will work with faculty at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), part of the University of Lisbon.
Clifton will collaborate there with assistant professor João de Abreu e Silva, a fellow travel behavior researcher whose areas of interest lie in transportation systems and land use patterns, specifically in urban environments.
Clifton’s research into bicycle and pedestrian travel demand modeling and the consumer behavior of active travelers has the potential to be applied in downtown Lisbon...
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If transportation projects need to span long distances or enable millions of trips to be considered of regional significance, what does that mean for active transportation? An Intertwine Alliance forum, hosted Jan. 27 by the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation at Portland State University, raised that among its many discussion questions.
The "How We Get There Matters" Regional Active Transportation Forum was sponsored by Metro, the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and Portland State University's Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation.
Speakers from organizations across the region offered their perspectives for participants, presenting ways to think of walking and bicycling as regionally significant. Discussion followed, with participants offering ideas in how to best make the case for elevating active projects to that level.
Participants spanned the public, private and nonprofit sectors and represented urban, suburban and rural communities. They arrived at Portland State’s Native American Student and Community Center by a variety of transportation modes.
Jennifer Dill, professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University and director of TREC and the NITC program, has been awarded the 2015 Dale Prize from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
She will spend Wednesday and Thursday at Cal Poly this week, attending a colloquium with students, educators and planning professionals and a formal banquet to receive the award.
The Dale Prize is an annual event organized by the department of urban and regional planning at Cal Poly Pomona. They recognize planning excellence with a pair of prizes each year: a $5,000 award to a scholar and a $5,000 award to a practitioner. Dill is receiving the scholar prize for 2015, and the practitioner prize goes to Fred Dock, director of transportation for the City of Pasadena, who is also a nationally recognized leader in multimodal transportation analysis and walking accessibility.
The department focuses on a different planning theme each year. This year’s theme is Streets for Everyone: Advancing Active Transportation.
Dill’s research into active transportation accessibility and mode share has made national headlines, most recently as part of the...
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The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) invites new proposals for general research in 2015.
NITC is the U.S. Department of Transportation’s national center for livable communities and one of five U.S. DOT national university transportation centers. The NITC program is a Portland State-led partnership with the University of Oregon, Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Utah and University of South Florida.
NITC is focused on contributing to transportation projects that support innovations in livability, incorporating safety and environmental sustainability. We will award at least $1 million to research and technology transfer projects that support NITC’s theme.
What's new in ths RFP
This request for proposals has a special emphasis on economic impacts. Up to $250,000 of these funds will prioritize research projects that study the economic impacts of livable communities.
All projects should range from $30,000 to $150,000 and must focus on research and technology transfer. Technology transfer proposals should support the application of transportation research to practice, including dissemination of research results, continuing education, and training.
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