Several Portland State University (PSU) students worked on research projects that will be shared at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). We're proud to have high-caliber students at PSU who are contributing to the discussion and technology transfer at the largest transportation conference in the world. See below for a quick look at each student, and check out the PSU program for more details!

Evan Howington

Session: Emerging Topics in Bicycling and Micromobility

Evan Howington is a master's student in urban and regional planning. He currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) at TREC, supporting faculty advisors John MacArthur and Nathan McNeil. 

Evan will be presenting research in a lectern session on January 6. He'll be sharing insights from the project, "Bike Buses: An Evaluation of an Emerging Active Transportation to School Intervention." He also presented this research with MacArthur and McNeil in a PSU Transportation Seminar on October 25. 

Bike Buses are a relatively new form of Active Transportation to School (ATS) that have gained popularity in Europe and the United States in recent years. Generally, a bike bus consists of one or more adult supervisors, often parents, who guide a group of students along a defined ‘route’ to one or more schools. Using literature from the last 15 years published on ATS in North America, the research team identify four thematic areas of influence on Bike Buses: school policies, parent and student attitudes and behaviors, the urban environment, and the street environment. They conclude that Bike Buses can be situated within the larger body of literature about ATS and Safe Routes to Schools (SRTS) but deserve research on their own merits for a variety of reasons. The presentation will also include findings from surveys of bike bus coordinators and parents at schools with bike buses in Portland, Oregon.

"Presenting our work to the wider transportation research community is incredibly affirming for the thousands of kids and parents who are changing the status quo of getting to school. The enthusiasm of this community is a much-needed, heartening reminder of the importance of making our roads and communities safer (and more fun!) for everyone," Evan said.

Connect with Evan on LinkedIn.

Elizabeth Yates

Sessions: Traffic Signal Control: Toward Safer and More Efficient Operations for Multimodal Users, and How Is the Intermodal Facility Performing?: Methods for Assessing Places Where Bikes, Buses, Trains, Scooters, and People Interact

Elizabeth Yates is a PSU civil engineering master's student. She received a scholarship last year from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) scholarship. She was also a member of the PSU team that took second place in the 2024 Oregon ITE Traffic Bowl, held on on November 21st.

Elizbeth was involved in two research projects that will be presented at this year's TRB meeting. The first, "Pedestrian Volumes from Push-Button Traffic Signal Data in Oregon: Estimating Models and Assessing Model Transferability," will be presented in a poster session on January 6. 

Many, if not all, active transportation projects rely on pedestrian volumes to measure exposure and need for intervention. A method for determining those volumes from signal data rather than the traditional manual counts will allow agencies to spend more time and money on design and implementation, hopefully leading to greater numbers of completed active transportation projects and a safer system for all users.

The second project, "Evaluation of User Interactions and Preferences of Shared Bicycle and Transit Platforms," will be presented in a lectern session on January 8. Fellow PSU student Jules Mai Plotts, an urban studies graduate student who currently works as a GRA at TREC, also contributed to the research. In a parntership with TriMet, PSU evaluated the design of a new shared-use bus platform that incorporates a sidewalk-level bike lane. Read more about the study.

"This project not only looked at the safety of the bus stop design, but also the ease of use for disabled people--particularly blind/low-vision people. Centering this community really drove home the challenges they face in navigating complex environments and accessing public transit. I am excited to take this experience forward into practice," Elizabeth said. 

Connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn.

Sophia Semensky

Session: Strategies for Law Enforcement to Advance Traffic Safety

Sophia Semensky is a civil engineering master's student. She currently works as an engineering associate at Kittelson & Associates. Sophia also serves as the VP of Events & Finances for PSU's ITE student chapter, Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (STEP).

Sophia will be sharing an in-progress research project funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), "Best Practices for Automated Speed Enforcement: Results from a Semi-Structured Interview of Agencies in the United States," in a lectern session on January 7. 

Connect with Sophia on LinkedIn.

We're proud to celebrate each of the students who are presenting at TRB, and excited to see the great work being done by the future transportation workforce. See more PSU research being presented at TRB.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is a multidisciplinary hub for all things transportation. We are home to the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), the data programs PORTAL and BikePed Portal, the Better Block PSU program, and PSU's membership in PacTrans, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium. Our continuing goal is to produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education, seminars, and participation in research. To get updates about what's happening at TREC, sign up for our monthly newsletter or follow us at the links below.

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