At TREC we've been meeting weekly to discuss our staff and organization's role in advancing racial equity in transportation academia and the profession. We've identified where we can have the greatest impact, and in the process have taken the first steps on several initiatives. Today we're sharing the work (Google Doc and Zotera) of several transportation professors in collecting readings on race, racism, equity and justice that faculty can use in their syllabi for university courses on transportation planning and engineering. This is an evolving list, and there are topics that need more resources. This initiative is led by TREC Director Jennifer Dill (PSU), Kendra K. Levine, (University of California, Berkeley) and Jesus Barajas (University of California, Davis).
Check out the syllabi resource list and our anti-racism action plan.
It’s nearly time to jump back into the academic year, and at Portland State University we have quite a few Fall 2020 transportation graduate courses that will all be offered online. If you are not a current PSU graduate student, you can still take these courses through the non-degree application process or as a post-baccalaureate student. Taking a course is one way to see if one of our PSU graduate degree programs is right for you!
Civil and Environmental Engineering
CE 4/514 Transportation Seminar; Chris Monsere
This weekly seminar features a different speaker each week covering various topics in... Read more
We'd like to congratulate two Portland State University individuals who received 2020 awards from the Western District of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).
Dr. Christopher Monsere of Portland State University was awarded the 2020 Outstanding Educator Award from ITE. Monsere is Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science at Portland State. His primary research interests are in design and operation of multimodal transportation facilities including user behavior, comprehension, preferences, and the overall safety effectiveness of transportation improvements.
The Outstanding Transportation Educator Award recognizes an individual who demonstrates...
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- Download the final report: "'I Should Have Moved Somewhere Else': The Impacts of Gentrification on Transportation and Social Support for Black Working-Poor Families in Portland, Oregon (PDF)"
- Download the Project Brief (PDF)
The historically Black district of Albina in Portland, Oregon, due to racist real estate practices, faced multiple displacement events between 1960 and 1990 with the construction of Interstate 5 through the heart of the neighborhood as well as wholesale destruction of hundreds of homes to make room for the Memorial Coliseum and various other urban renewal projects. Gentrification in Portland saw a mass displacement of Black households from Albina, largely to East Portland, a suburban area that was unincorporated...
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Following the successful finish of Portland State's first-ever remote Spring Term, we're taking a moment to highlight the projects of students in transportation engineering and planning who worked through unusual pandemic conditions. See below for a recap of transportation student work that was wrapped up at the end of the 2019/2020 academic year. Last year's graduating masters of urban studies students focused on human-powered transportation, and this year's projects address a range of topics from improved active transportation infrastructure to equity and access.
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Masters of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) Workshop Projects
Every year, graduating Master of Urban and Regional Planning students participate in a workshop project where they develop planning projects for clients in the community.
Roses from Concrete
Portland State University researchers have received funding for five new transportation research projects via the National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC), a research consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation and led by Portland State. The projects listed below have been awarded to PSU faculty along with some inter-university collaborators, and will investigate a range of topics from leveraging advanced technology to create smart transportation systems to improving universal access and equity:
Travel time reliability is a key metric of interest to practitioners and researchers. This project will evaluate and develop methods to determine confidence intervals and hypothesis tests for select travel time reliability parameters. The researchers will also study the applicability of existing travel time reliability metrics for class one vehicles (bicycles and motorbikes) and the feasibility of defining an overall travel time reliability of an arterial segment that considers all modes.
Last year, Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) released a 130 page evaluation comparing equity-oriented programs from over 70 U.S. bike share systems across the U.S. Bike share being a relative newcomer to the transportation system, the research team was not surprised to find that approaches to equity programs ranged widely. In the latest installment, funded by the Better...
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Learn more about Jaime Orrego-Oñate: Follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn
Jaime Orrego-Oñate, a civil engineering PhD candidate at Portland State University (PSU), has been awarded a $15,000 Oregon Sylff Fellowship for International Research. As a Chilean national completing a Ph.D. in transportation engineering at PSU, Jaime is poised to promote the expansion of American research abroad into countries that lack research resources. His research focuses on understanding the role of the urban form in active transportation decisions. With his work, he hopes to address an information gap between pedestrians’ motivations to walk and how urban planners can encourage this behavior. This is of particular importance in the context of Jaime's home region, Latin America, where walking has been decreasing due to the rise of use of private automobiles.
"I want to spearhead positive change by convincing societies like mine that they can improve urban development," Orrego-Oñate said.
The Sylff program aims to identify and nurture leaders who will overcome differences in nationality, language, ethnicity, religion, and political systems to tackle global issues, and whose high integrity and drive to address issues unique to their respective countries can make a real difference. Fellowship stipends are...
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The new article Evidence from Urban Roads without Bicycle Lanes on the Impact of Bicycle Traffic on Passenger Car Travel Speeds published in Transportation Research Record, the Journal of the Transportation Research Board, demonstrates that bicycles do not significantly reduce passenger car travel speeds on low speed, low volume urban roads without bicycle lanes. Authored by Jaclyn Schaefer, Miguel Figliozzi, and Avinash Unnikrishnan of Portland State University, the research shows that differences in vehicle speeds with and without cyclists were generally on the order of 1 mph or less – negligible from a practical perspective.
A concern raised by...
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Authored by Mike McQueen and John MacArthur, Portland State University
- Read the 2020 research paper in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment with updated model & findings.
- Use the online Electric Vehicle Incentive Cost and Impact Tool
Electric bikes (e-bikes) are quickly becoming common in U.S. cities and suburbs, but we still have a ways to go compared to our neighbors across the Atlantic. In recent years, e-bike sales have steadily increased with unprecedented growth in Europe, especially in the Netherlands. Can the U.S. catch up? E-bikes offer a cheaper alternative to car travel and also provide physical activity. Riders with limited physical ability find that e-bikes...
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