Portland State University

Rob Bertini and Hau Hagedorn met with Gail Achterman, Director of the OSU Institute for Natural Resources and Chair of the Oregon Transportation Commission, to provide updates on OTREC and to discuss future research opportunities and partnerships to move towards transportation mobility services. Some view mobility services as a vital piece of transportation sustainability equation.

STEP members attended the 2008 ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibit in Anaheim, California. Students were able to interact with professionals from all over the country and learn about case studies that were divided into four categories; traffic engineering and design, safety, planning, management and operations, and conversation circles. Members also went on a special tour of the toll lanes on California State Route 91. This congestion priced road is one of the countryís few roads that generate enough revenue to fully pay all of its expenses. Dr. Christopher Monsere presented on the National Transportation Education Conference at the Current Practice in Professional Education and Training session. STEP also won the Student Chapter Web Site Award. STEP members also had the opportunity in the evenings to enjoy nearby Downtown Disneyland and Newport Beach. STEP would like to thank SALP and OTREC for their funding support. The picture on the left shows (from left to right) Dr. Christopher Monsere, Chengyu Dai, Rolando Melgoza, Huan Li, Alex Bigazzi, Lisa Diercksen, and Leah Tomlinson. (Written by Rolando Melgoza)

On August 15th, over 30 high school youth from Oregon participated in design charette concluding the OTREC-sponsored Oregon Young Scholars Program. The young scholars were presented with a design problem earlier in the week and worked with their perspective cohorts (business, public health, planning and design, art and science) to educate themselves about the issue. The problem looked at the West Eugene Corridor as the next place to pursue bus rapid transit. Alternatives were identified, and the young scholars were charged with determining where the route should go. The charette included involvement from the young scholars and professionals from the Lane Transit District and the City of Eugene explore solutions to the design problem. On Saturday, the students gave a formal presentation to their parents and the City based on the results of the charette.

Drs. Christopher Monsere and Miguel Figliozzi made four presentations at at the North American Travel Monitoring Exhibition & Conference (NATMEC) in Washington D.C., August 6-8, 2008. Professor Monsere presented “Toward Incorporating Arterial Performance Quality in the PORTAL Archived Data User Service,” “Building a WIM Data Archive for Improved Modeling, Design, and Rating” and “Techniques for Establishing and Measuring Data Quality in an Archived Data User Service.” Co-authors included R.L. Bertini, K. Tufte, A. Nichols, M. Berkow and M. Wolfe. Professor Figliozzi presented “Linking Freight Planning and Real-Time Traffic Data to Monitor Freight Performance Measures,” which was co-authored with K. Tufte.