Delivering Packages at Transit Stations: Considering Accessibility and Equity in Site Placement
If you could securely pick up your packages on your commute by public transit, from any carrier—be it USPS, FedEx, UPS or other companies, would you? Transit agencies could be missing a potential strategy to increase ridership by offering common carrier parcel lockers at transit facilities.
Mitigating the demands on our urban transportation networks by consolidating parcel deliveries at high trafficked transit facilities could also benefit retailers, logistics and carrier companies, and consumers. But how do we ensure the equitable distribution of these sites for disadvantaged populations, while keeping accessibility in mind?
Using real world data from the Portland, OR region, a new study from researchers at Portland State University (PSU) offers a multiple-criteria approach using accessibility and equity metrics, including ridership, mode of transportation, spatial distribution, and sociodemographic profiles of coverage areas.
Read MoreLimited Free Access: The article in Transportation Research Record, "Accessibility and Equity Analysis of Transit Facility Sites for Common Carrier Parcel Lockers," by Katherine Keeling, Jaclyn Schaefer and Miguel Figliozzi, will be...
The 2021 World Symposium on Transport and Land Use Research was held virtually August–11, and three recorded sessions are available to watch. See below for links to the opening and closing keynote speeches and a panel discussion on Portland, Oregon's urban growth boundary. TREC co-sponsored the conference with The World Society for Transport and Land Use Research (WSTLUR). Portland State University's interim Associate Vice President for Research, Kelly Clifton, and TREC director Jennifer Dill co-hosted the event along with Yingling Fan of the University of Minnesota. Check out the recordings here:
- Opening Keynote: Dr. Susan Handy, University of California Davis
- Closing Keynote: Dr. Juan Pablo Bocarejo, Universidad de los Andes
- Panel: Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary: Featuring Sy Adler, Portland State University; Lynn Peterson, Metro Council; and Marisa Zapata, Portland State University
The first WSTLUR...
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Returning to primarily on-campus learning, the fall term at Portland State University starts September 27, 2021. See PSU’s COVID-19 Student Resources for the latest info on our campus vaccination requirement for students and staff. Some in-person courses may shift to offer an online or hybrid attendance option as the situation evolves; stay tuned for any updates.
Students enrolled in a PSU degree program can register online. Not a current PSU graduate student? Lifelong adult learning is a guiding principle of PSU, and you can still take these courses through the non-degree application process or as a post-baccalaureate student (opens Sept. 7th). Taking a course is one way to see if one of our PSU graduate degree programs...
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The National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research consortium, led by Portland State University, has awarded $485,456 in total funding for seven new research projects spanning five universities. With the extension of the FAST Act, NITC received one additional year of funding, and given this limited time frame, we emphasized projects that were relatively short in length, relied on existing expertise, and would yield specific outputs and outcomes. Several of the projects have an equity focus, and much of the research aims to make it easier to get around multimodally and/or by walking. The seven new projects are:
- Rumore and Stoker focus on the unique transportation challenges of 'gateway' communities, or small towns adjacent to natural areas that attract large populations. Their previous...
Dr. Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State University Awarded 2021 APBP Research Professional of the Year
We're proud to announce that Dr. Sirisha Kothuri, Senior Research Associate at Portland State University, has been awarded the 2021 Research Professional of the Year award by the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP). The APBP Professional of the Year Awards recognize the achievements of pedestrian and bicycle professionals made in the last twelve months in the private, public, research, and nonprofit sectors.
Dr. Kothuri’s contributions to advance the state of practice in bicycle and pedestrian safety research are outstanding. She has worked to inspire the next generation in our field and advance the professional knowledge of others through research around multimodal traffic operations, bicycle and pedestrian counting, and safety, with an emphasis in innovation in non-motorized transport.
Watch her accept the reward:
"Transformative Transportation Survey Methods: Enhancing Household Transportation Survey Methods for Hard-To-Reach Populations," is a new article published in the September 2021 issue of Transportation Research Part D. It was co-authored by Amy Lubitow, a sociology faculty member at Portland State University, Erika Carpenter, a sociology graduate student, and Julius McGee, a faculty member in urban studies and planning.
The study explores the challenges that hard-to-reach populations face in completing household activity surveys. Researchers drew on qualitative data from hard-to-reach populations regarding the limits of the Oregon Household Activity Survey and found evidence that the survey methods lack social, cultural, and linguistic applicability for Black, Indigenous and other people of color, as well as low-income populations. The authors argue that Oregon’s household travel survey prioritizes certain ways of understanding and experiencing mobility that are, by default, exclusionary. The article concludes in sharing insights regarding how transportation professionals might ...
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How can we use a variety of data-driven speed management strategies to make transportation safer and more efficient for all modes–whether you’re driving, walking or taking transit?
The project was led by Yao Jan Wu, director of the Smart Transportation Lab at the University of Arizona. Co-investigators were Xianfeng Terry Yang of the University of Utah, who researches traffic operations and modeling along with connected automated vehicles, and Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State University, whose research has focused on improving signal timing to better serve pedestrians. Join them on Sept 15, 2021 for a free webinar to learn more.
"We want to improve mobility for all users, be it pedestrians, vehicle drivers or transit riders, and there are different strategies to do this. How do we harness data to drive us to these strategies?" Kothuri said.
Funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), this multi-university collaboration addressed the question from three angles:
- Wu and his students in Arizona looked at the impact of speed management strategies on conventional roadways...
Interested in active transportation research? What’s been done? What should be done?
We’re excited to share the release of the Research Roadmap for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Council on Active Transportation (CAT). The Roadmap was created to foster research that will address important active transportation needs at the state DOT level and beyond.
Funded by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), a team of researchers from the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University (PSU) and Toole Design prepared the Research Roadmap over the past 18 months. They reviewed existing and on-going active transportation research, identified key research needs from a wide range of sources, and held outreach activities with practitioners to refine and prioritize those needs.
The project offers guidance on where active transportation research has been, and where it should go next in developing speed management strategies to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety on arterial roadways, determining context-driven optimal spacing between marked crosswalks, addressing racial and economic disparities in safety improvements, refining guidance on bicycle signal timing, overcoming barriers to implementing active transportation in planning and engineering practice, and many more research questions:
- The...
Last year, a car driver hit a César Chávez K-8 School student at the intersection of N. Portsmouth Ave and N. Willis Blvd in Portland, OR. It underscored what parents, teachers and Portland community members have been demanding for many years: increased investment in traffic safety at schools during pick up and drop off hours.
What’s more: Portsmouth’s residents already had a lot of ideas of how to improve pedestrian safety at this intersection.
Seeking to help the community take action on these ideas, Safe Routes to School advocacy professionals William Francis and Hanna Howsmon at Community Cycling Center and César Chávez teacher Sam Balto recommended this intersection as a potential quick build project for the Better Block PSU pathway program-–a partnership between the volunteer-led group Better Block PDX and the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University that pairs transportation students with community-led projects.
“PSU students support community members with the technical aspects of infrastructure improvements–elevating and materializing their ideas by developing plans, designs, and engineering concepts. It’s a shift from the status quo with a ground-up approach, and their transportation expertise can help community members in navigating the permit process or proposing informed solutions to the city,” shared Hau Hagedorn, TREC Associate...
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Research demonstrates that marginalized populations experience significant barriers in accessing transit. The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) and the Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative (HRAC) at Portland State University are working with the University of Utah in a project funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) to understand how people from selected historically marginalized communities experience discrimination and harassment on transit and in public areas such as sidewalks, bus stops, and transit platforms when accessing transit.
The study will be conducted in two sites: Portland, Oregon and Salt Lake City, Utah. In Portland, the study population will include racially and ethnically diverse people experiencing homelessness and people who identify as transgender and gender nonconforming; and ride TriMet. In Salt Lake City, the study population will include people experiencing homelessness as well as diverse groups based on their gender, racial, and ethnic identity; who ride Utah Transit Authority. We are seeking transit riders to help inform the study through photos and interviews. Participants will be compensated up to $50 for their labor. The researchers will be recruiting participants for this study through the end of August.
PARTICIPATION INVOLVES:
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Dr. Huajie Yang, who graduated in 2020 with a PhD in Urban Studies and Planning from Portland State University, devoted his doctoral research to studying the impacts of light rail transit. His dissertation, "Short-term and Long-term Effects of New Light Rail Transit Service on Transit Ridership and Traffic Congestion at Two Geographical Levels," quantitatively examines the effect of new Light Rail Transit (LRT) services on transit ridership and traffic congestion over time.
Connect with Huajie Yang on LinkedIn
Yang examined light rail's impacts at two different geographic levels. At the corridor level, he conducted case studies of two light rail lines in the Portland, Oregon region (TriMet's Green and Orange MAX lines). At the regional level, he used a synthetic control method to construct a control Urbanized Area that closely approximates the counterfactual transit ridership and traffic congestion scenario - in the absence of light rail projects - in three urbanized areas across America.
The results of the corridor-level study suggest that both the Green and Orange lines increased transit ridership in the short and long term, and relieved traffic congestion in the short term, while having no...
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