Portland State University

For someone who refuses to make predictions, Brian David Johnson has a long list of examples of how the future he envisioned came true.

It’s his job, after all.

As a futurist, Johnson helps organizations imagine what they’ll be doing 10 years in the future and then models the steps they’ll need to achieve that vision.

Johnson will describe his work, and offer insights relevant to transportation professionals, as the keynote speaker at the Transportation and Communities Summit Sept. 9 at Portland State University.

Transportation figures heavily into both popular visions of the future and Johnson’s work—but not in the same way. “Cities and transportation and infrastructure are some of the most important parts of futurecasting”—Johnson’s name for this method of modeling—he said.

Although audiences raised on jet pack-based transportation science fiction don’t welcome this message, “the cities of the future are going to look like the cities of today,” Johnson said. “It’s one of the most unpopular things I tell people.”

But consider the alternative. “Culturally, we value the past, and our future will look a lot like that,” Johnson said. “I don’t think that’s a bad thing. ‘The Jetsons’ is a sci-fi dystopia.”

Finding a future that looks like the present, or even the past, is a surprising theme in Johnson’s work, which has included consulting for firms such as Intel and trade...

In the spring of 2015, with guidance provided by the NITC program, students at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York created a pedestrian and bicycle plan for the City of Canandaigua, New York.

As part of their Sustainable Community Development capstone course, the students in environmental studies provided plans for a mixed use district along Route 332 in Canandaigua.

Course instructor Jim Ochterski credits PSU researcher Lynn Weigand’s NITC education project, Enhancing Bicycle and Pedestrian Education through Curriculum and Faculty Development, with providing essential resources for the course.

“Most of the students did not have any grounding in pedestrian planning and development, and [the NITC materials] made a huge difference,” Ochterski said.

Part of the mission of the NITC program is to enrich transportation education. One way our university partners do this is by developing curricula to advance transportation and livability goals in the classroom.

Weigand's project was intended for just this purpose. She created a module-based curriculum for bicycle and pedestrian planning and design that was designed to be adaptable for use in a variety of course offerings.

The HWS instructors took that curriculum and ran with it.

“We took on a major community project in ped/bike planning because we had these support materials from the program. It allowed us to...

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities program, or NITC, has selected its latest round of general research projects. The NITC executive committee chose to fund 11 out of 28 proposals submitted for funding.

Eligible resarchers from the program's five campuses (in this solicitation, Portland State Univeristy, University of Oregon, Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Utah and University of South Florida) submitted proposals representing $2.8 million in funding, far more than the $986,000 available. Funded proposals feature principal investigators from each NITC partner campus: four from Portland State, one from Oregon Tech and two each from University of Oregon, University of Utah and University of South Florida. Three projects involved collaboration between universities.

The selected projects are:

• Evaluating and Enhancing Public Transit Systems for Operational Efficiency, Service Quality and Access Equity, Ran Wei (University of Utah), Liming Wang & Aaron Golub (Portland State University)
• Rapid Transportation Structure Evaluation Toolkit, Charles Riley (Oregon Institute of Technology)  
• Does Compact Development Increase or Reduce Traffic Congestion?, Reid Ewing (University of Utah)
• ...

TREC is offering a free summer program for high school girls who are interested in transportation studies.

The Summer Transportation Institute will run from July 11–22, 2016.

It is part of a national initiative funded by the FHWA to address the need of a diverse workforce in the 21st century.

The two-week intensive summer day camp will consist of classroom instruction in the mornings and field tours in the afternoons.

Field tours will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the agencies and systems that operate in Portland, and the classroom sessions will provide an understanding of the tools that transportation professionals use to achieve community goals.

Students will gain the skills necessary to solve complex transportation problems and make real change in their communities, as well as a firsthand look at how the Portland transportation universe functions.

In addition, the course will have a focus on social justice, with an examination of how to increase transportation availability and service to traditionally underserved communities.

The course administrator, Sarah Dougher, is an American singer-songwriter, author, and teacher based in Portland, Oregon. TREC is fortunate to have her skills and experience focused on this one-of-a-kind program....