OTREC had visitors on Wednesday, July 24.
A delegation of six ECTRI directors from Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, and Finland are finishing up a "Scanning Tour" of the United States, and OTREC was the third stop on their four-stop tour.
The European Conference of Transport Research Institutes, or ECTRI, is an international non-profit organization. Its members are 26 major transport research institutes or universities from 19 European countries, and its mission is to help build the "European Research Area" (ERA) in transport.
The 2013 Scanning Tour's theme is "Transport and Liveability: Sustainabiity of urban areas." Assisted by the Transportation Research Board, ECTRI made four stops in the USA: Washington, D.C., to participate in the TRB conference; Cambridge and Boston, Mass. for a visit to Volpe and to MIT's freight lab; Portland, Ore., to talk with Jennifer Dill and John MacArthur about OTREC's sustainable transportation program; and finally Davis, Calif., to visit the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis.
Wednesday's visit was brief and pleasant. OTREC staff gave the delegation a presentation about the work that OTREC does and its sustainable cities initiative, followed by questions...
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OTREC was well-represented at this year’s Western ITE conference, the 2013 conference for the Western District of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Eight graduate student researchers presented papers at the conference, which took place July 14 through 17 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Portland State University students Katherine Bell, Kirk Paulsen, Adam Moore, Wei Feng, Sirisha Kothuri, Pamela Johnson, Sam Thompson and Alex Bigazzi attended the three-day conference and showcased their work in transportation research.
The conference was held at the Arizona Biltmore, a 1920’s luxury hotel created by architects Albert Chase McArthur and Frank Lloyd Wright. For the engineering and planning students, the Biltmore held its own attraction as an example of unique architecture, and in between events they enjoyed walking the grounds.
Katherine Bell, a Master’s student whose research interests include planning, modeling and performance measures for freight, gave a presentation on the use of a smart phone application with a GPS device for...
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The 2013 Oregon Transportation Summit will take place this fall, on September 16 at Portland State University. The summit brings together transportation professionals to shape the agenda for future research, and this year's plenary speaker addresses new federal legislation which will have a direct affect on that agenda.
Adie Tomer of the Brookings Institution will deliver the remarks at the summit's morning plenary session. The topic is MAP-21, a new act which was passed by Congress in 2012. Short for "Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century," the act redistributes the scope and responsibilities of transportation departments at all levels, from municipal to federal.
"What MAP-21 essentially did is, it enhanced the evolution that's available within the federal program," Tomer said. "Because it is an overarching policy, it touches on every actor in the system in a unique way." For example, "MPOs (Metropolitan Planning Organizations) are now tasked with collecting performance measurements ... and state offices are pushed to do a little more planning when it comes to freight."
The Ann Niles Transportation Lecture series opens Aug. 26 with a lecture from Jean-François Pronovost of Vélo Québec titled "Growing a World-Class Cycling Culture: Lessons from Québec." The series is sponsored by the Ann Niles Transportation Lecture Endowment and serves as a legacy to Ann Niles, an advocate for livable neighborhoods.
Philip Niles created the endowment with a gift to the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation, or IBPI, in honor of his late wife. Ann Niles was a strong advocate for livable neighborhoods and served on many transportation-related boards and committees in Portland.
The lecture series keeps alive the spirit of Ann Niles' advocacy. Niles pushed for better sidewalks and crosswalks to make Portland a safe and comfortable place to walk, and for bicycle routes and parking to do the same for bicycling.
"This inaugural Ann Niles Transportation Lecture, and all those that follow, help spread Ann's passion for creating livable neighborhoods to students, practitioners and the greater community," said OTREC Director Jennifer Dill.
The series' first speaker, Pronovost, has helped bring active transportation into the lives of people in communities across Québec. As vice president for development and public affairs for Vélo Québec, he helps develop new projects and partnerships.
One of the...
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Portland, Oregon is known for being a bike city, even called America's Best Bike City by Bicycling Magazine, so it's no surprise at all that Portland State University is full of bike enthusiasts.
Sirisha Kothuri, an OTREC scholar for the past two years and a current Ph.D. candidate at Portland State University, has been awarded one of NITC'S 2013 dissertation fellowships.
The $15,000 fellowship -- funded through an ISS (Institute for Sustainable Solutions) grant -- along with an $800 OTREC/NITC scholarship for the 2012-2013 academic year, will assist Kothuri with her research into pedestrian signal timing.
Sirisha was born and raised in Hyderabad, India, and still misses the heat — or at least, the warmth; she has yet to become completely acclimated to Portland, Ore weather. In Hyderabad she obtained a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Osmania University in 1999. She moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1999 to get a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University.
A visit to Illinois for her brother's graduation opened her eyes to the automobile-centric cities that make up much of the United States. She was surprised at some of the infrastructure in the Midwest, which decidedly favors cars over pedestrian and other means of active transport.
Walking plays a significant...
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Susan Petheram, a Ph.D. candidate in the Metropolitan Planning, Policy, & Design program at the University of Utah, has recently been awarded a NITC dissertation fellowship.
NITC fellowships are awarded to fund research on surface transportation topics that fit under the NITC theme of safe, healthy, and sustainable transportation choices to foster livable communities. Petheram's research focuses on the integration of transportation and land use, and on building healthy communities through transit access.
Her dissertation research involves evaluating some of the effects of the light rail system in Salt Lake County. Scarcely more than a decade old, the TRAX light rail system has three lines in service as of 2013, and some of the transportation researchers at the University of Utah are taking advantage of this living laboratory to explore the effects of a light rail system upon the neighborhoods and suburbs that it serves.
Calvin Tribby, for example, another NITC fellow from the University of Utah, is observing the new transit opportunities' effect on public health. Petheram's research focuses on a different angle: the light rail's effect on property values.
In particular, she is interested in...
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University of Oregon Master's student Joe McAndrew was recently awarded an Eno fellowship and invited to participate in the 2013 Eno Leadership Development Conference.
The fellowship is an extraordinary opportunity for students on a career track to become transportation policymakers. Only 20 fellows nationwide are chosen each year, and only one student from each university transportation program can be nominated by their school. McAndrew attended the 21st annual conference in Washington, D.C. from June 2 to 6, all expenses paid.
"It was fabulous," said the second-year planning student from UO. In the course of the four-day conference he was able to attend a variety of panels and events, but said that for him, "the true highlight was just the people that we were able to meet."
Conference attendees included "high-level officials, executive directors from all sectors and levels of government," McAndrew said, "from the freight industry, which included trucks, rail, and port; to the airline industry, to Capitol Hill staffers... we also met with the executive directors from Parsons-Brinckerhoff, AASHTO and the like. It was an all-encompassing opportunity."
The Eno Center for Transportation is a non-partisan "think-tank" that promotes policy innovation in the field of transportation...