TRB 2020: Highlights from Portland State University
Portland State continued our tradition of standing out at last month's annual gathering of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). We've collected some highlight stories as well as posters and presentations of Portland State University research presented at the conference. Explore the links below to see what PSU researchers brought to D.C. this year, and read about some student and faculty accomplishments at the nation's largest transportation research conference.
We've also collected our best photos—Check out our TRB 2020 photo album here.
PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY HIGHLIGHTS
- Gabby Abou-Zeid won Top Ranked Masters Fellowship for the Eisenhowers Fellows
- Baxter Shandobil and Kelly Clifton won Best in Session from #TRBAM Public Transportation Planning and Development Committee (AP025)
- As co-author, Sirisha Kothuri won the AHB50 2019 Best Paper Award with a younger member. First author Hisham Jashami (Oregon State PhD student). Also co-authored by Chris. Evaluation of Driver Comprehension of FYA Permissive Right Turns.
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Gabby Abou-Zeid is a first-year civil engineering graduate student, 2019 Eisenhower Fellow and recipient of the 2019 IBPI Rex Burkholder and Lydia Rich Scholarship. She is pursuing her M.S. at Portland State University and working with Dr. Kelly Clifton's SUPER (Sustainable Urban Planning & Engineering Research) Lab. She received her BS in sustainable built environments from the University of Arizona in 2019, and plans on pursuing a PhD in a transportation-related field after her master's program. Prior to coming to PSU, she conducted research with Dr. Clifton through the Transportation Undergraduate Reearch Fellow (TURF) program*. Gabby will present her work on the demand for freight at multifamily apartment buildings on February 14 in a Friday Transportation Seminar at Portland State.
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Read moreEach 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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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 different modes can share our infrastructure safely. It should look at...
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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?...
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- Visit the Project Website (includes the Appendix details, mapped and links to Google Streetview)
The latest report from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), “Road User Understanding of Bicycle Signal Faces on Traffic Signals” (20-07/Task 420), zeroes in on some key gaps in research and practice around road users' comprehension of bicycle-specific traffic signal faces.
Led by Chris Monsere and Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State University, the...
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- This research is also featured in a May 2019 addendum to NACTO's Urban Bikeway Design Guide: Don't Give Up at the Intersection...
The 99th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) will be held in Washington, D.C. January 12–16, and TREC will be there in force, as is our tradition. Portland State University is sending 14 faculty and staff to present their expertise at TRB, and you can download our full guide here:
DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE TO PSU AT TRB 2020 (PDF)
Here are some highlights of lectern presentations:
- Monday, 10:15 AM, Addressing Equity in a Changing World – Aaron Golub and Nathan McNeil of the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning (USP) will present in lectern session 1166 on Addressing Changing Demographics in Environmental Justice Analysis: Review of Demographic Trends and State of Practice.
- Tuesday, 8:00 AM, Bicycling Toward Equity: Opportunities, Barriers, and Policies for Vulnerable Groups – Jennifer Dill, Nathan McNeil, John MacArthur and Joseph Broach (USP) will present in lectern session 1394 on Bicycling and Bikeshare among Women of Color in 3 US Cities: Barriers and Opportunities...
Last week the Portland State University’s Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (STEP-ITE) group competed in the 28th annual Bill Kloos Traffic Bowl Competition held by Oregon ITE.
Competition in this trivia-based challenge was fierce, but the PSU student team took first place against the ITE student chapters of Oregon State University, Oregon Tech, and the University of Washington. In addition to bragging rights, they won a $500 cash prize that will go towards supporting STEP student activities for PSU transportation students.
Portland State University 2019 Team
- STEP President Nicholas Puczkowskyj | PhD Candidate, Urban Studies
- STEP VP Finance Rohan Sirupa | Graduate Student, Civil Engineering
- STEP VP Communications Katherine Keeling | Graduate Student, Civil Engineering
- STEP VP Events Gabby Galvez | Undergraduate Student, Civil Engineering
- STEP VP Creativity Polina Polikahina | Undergraduate Student, Civil Engineering
Photo Credit: Oregon ITE Chapter
In addition to this annual event, Oregon ITE...
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In celebration of Portland State University's Day of Giving on December 3rd, we're devoting our efforts this year to raising funds in support of experiential learning opportunities through travel scholarships for transportation students.
TREC Experiential Learning Scholarships are part of a new initiative to broaden our student impact beyond our hands-on experience in research and support of PSU's Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (STEP). We want to support immersive, experiential trainings outside of the Portland metro region. Introducing students to people and learning opportunities in other states and countries will allow them to bring innovative transportation concepts back to Portland, Oregon. This includes our flagship study abroad program: "Sustainable Transportation in the Netherlands" which will be held again this summer June 21 - July 4, 2020.
DONATE TO THE TREC SCHOLARSHIP
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LEARNING...
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In the past decade bike and pedestrian count programs have sprung up all over the United States, gathering data to evaluate biking and walking infrastructure. However, these modes have not been studied with the quantitative rigor applied to motor vehicle travel. A research project funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), led by Nathan McNeil of Portland State University (PSU), offers a method for monitoring the quality of this bike-ped count data.
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