2017 TCS Recap: View slides from the breakout sessions and workshops, see PDFs of the posters, revisit the PechaKucha presentations, or read instructions for recording your continuing education credits.
The two-day 2017 Transportation and Communities Summit, held at Portland State University (PSU) on September 11–12, drew 315 attendees from over 10 states and over 40 cities and towns. This was the largest summit we’ve ever hosted, and we hope it created new opportunities for collaboration between researchers and practitioners.
This event was sponsored by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), a national university transportation center managed by TREC housed at PSU. NITC is a partnership between PSU, the University of Oregon, the Oregon Institute of Technology, the University of Utah, and our newest partners - the University of Arizona and the University of Texas at Arlington.
NITC researchers at all six of the partner universities were introduced in a series of "Meet the Researcher" tweets and videos, to familiarize attendees with the research interests of NITC faculty and to open...
Read more
Steven Howland, PhD Candidate in Urban Studies at Portland State University
In addition to being a student, Steven has also acted as a researcher on a number of TREC projects:
- Suburban Black Poverty in East Portland: The Role of Transportation in Making Ends Meet
- Evaluating Efforts to Improve the Equity of Bike Share Systems
- Peer-To-Peer Carsharing: Short-term effects on travel behavior in Portland, OR
Learn more about Steven by checking out his researcher profile, following him on Twitter @SHowland886, or read his recently published article in Metroscape Magazine "The Geography of the Commute".
Tell us about yourself:
I am Steven Howland, a PhD candidate in Urban Studies, where I specialize in economic development and poverty with particular interest in the intersections of the two with transportation issues. I hold a Bachelor's and Master's in Planning from Arizona State University. My dissertation looks at the transportation...
Read more
Happy World #CarFreeDay! Not satisfied with just one day of celebrating alternate mobility choice, we're kicking off a year of #OffbeatCommute by sharing the off the beaten path commutes of the staff, faculty and researchers of TREC, NITC and IBPI. Whether that's by bike, public transit, rollerblades, skateboarding, or running.
We invite you to join us in tagging your #OffbeatCommute by sharing your photos, videos and stories!
Starting off with a bang, here's our Communications Coordinator, Lacey Friedly, on her trek to TREC (hint, water is involved):
In celebration of Car-Free Day, I wanted to share a video of my human-powered journey to work. And so, last month I borrowed a GoPro and recorded my commute. I wanted to do this before the summer was over, because my commute had gotten particularly awesome during 2017. Earlier this summer I heard about Benjamin David, the man who got so tired of the traffic in Munich that he started swimming to work each day in the River Isar. I thought, that's so great—he chose to commute on his own terms. Why stay in the lines when you don't have to?
This got me thinking about human-powered travel. I live in Milwaukie, Oregon, and...
Read more
Nineteen girls presented ingenious transportation ideas to a packed room on Friday, August 18, the closing day of TREC's 2017 National Summer Transportation Institute (NSTI). For two weeks, the high schoolers had stayed in Ondine Residence Hall on the Portland State University campus; meeting for daily lectures at PSU's Engineering Building, hearing from some of the women who run transportation systems in Portland, Oregon and touring the city's agencies.
In between guest lectures and field trips, the NSTI class worked on group projects, which they presented at Friday's closing event to their family members and the course instructors.
On the first day of the camp, they were asked to think about a real-world transportation problem so they could use the skills they would gain to present a solution at the end of the course. The problems were real, and the solutions were impressive.
It might be because the guest lecturers were actual practitioners, who gave real talk about the issues they've encountered in their work and how they've tried to solve them.
It might also be because the curriculum was directed by TREC's own amazing Lisa Patterson and Ellee Stapleton along with...
Read more
Learn more about this research by viewing the two-page Project Brief, related presentations, and the full Final Report on the Project Overview page.
As cities aim to promote sustainable, multimodal growth, sometimes the way we go about development review processes can create barriers to achieving the results we want. Some of the methods we have inherited, while still useful, have distinct limitations.
NITC dissertation fellow Kristina Currans took on this challenge in her doctoral research project, Data and Methodological Issues in Assessing Multimodal Transportation Impacts for Urban Development.
The guidelines for evaluating transportation impacts of new development were originally published in 1976 by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). Decades later, we’re still using essentially the same processes all across the U.S. and Canada, and these methods—which harbor a lack of...
Read more
Normally we assume that travel is a means to an end, but the latest NITC report examines other benefits of travel—aspects that aren’t about reaching a destination.
One such benefit is travel-based multitasking. A good example of this is using time on a commuter train to listen to music, relax or get some work done. The simple enjoyment of a walk in the fresh air relates to another benefit, known as subjective well-being, in which the act of travel itself makes a person feel better. These intrinsic benefits can impact travel behavior and mode choice, but our current models don’t have any way to reflect this.
NITC fellow Patrick Singleton investigated the policy and planning implications of this in his dissertation, Exploring The Positive Utility Of Travel And Mode Choice.
"The way we analyze travel behavior assumes people want to get from A to B as quickly as possible. We don’t include the...
Read more
It’s never too early to start teaching kids about careers in transportation. Though they might not be ready for complex engineering equations, elementary school children are more than ready to form ideas about possible futures.
On July 27 at Poynter Middle School in Hillsboro, Oregon, around 70 young Latina girls learned about different transportation modes, mapped their neighborhoods, and exchanged ideas with seven female professionals who work in transportation in the Portland metro area.
Lisa Patterson, TREC’s workforce development program manager, coordinated the event with Chicas Youth Development, a program of Adelante Mujeres. Patterson and a crew of six dedicated volunteers taught three transportation-focused workshops at a Chicas summer scholastic camp.
The purpose of the workshops was to teach students about transportation concepts and introduce them to the possibility that they could grow up to work in transportation, an industry very much in need of a diverse workforce.
Patterson and volunteers Olivia Holden, Gwen Chambers, Molly McCormick, Erin Wardell, Jessica Pelz and Tegan Enloe spent the day in three workshops with different age groups, leading brainstorming exercises and encouraging the girls to think about the ways in which transportation affects their daily lives.
...
Read more
The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is now accepting proposals for Small Starts grants and Dissertation Fellowships.
- Small Starts proposals are due September 15, 2017.
- Dissertation Fellowship proposals are due October 23, 2017.
SMALL STARTS
The purpose of a Small Starts grant is to assist researchers who are interested in transportation but have not had an opportunity to undertake a small project consistent with NITC's theme of Improving the Mobility of People and Goods to Build Strong Communities.
The NITC theme connects directly with the U.S. DOT priority of improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. All proposals must be consistent with this theme, as defined in the request for proposals.
Faculty members and research faculty eligible to serve as Principal Investigators (PIs) at our partner universities: Portland State University, Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah may submit proposals and serve as PIs with NITC.
Read more about Small Starts grants,...
Read more
