On August 10, 2005 the President signed the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). SAFETEA-LU authorizes the Federal surface transportation programs for highways, highway safety, and transit for 2005-2009. Within SAFETEA-LU, University Transportation Centers are authorized, and through this legislation a National University Transportation Center was created at Portland State University (PSU). Later named the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC), the Center is a partnership between PSU, the University of Oregon (UO), Oregon State University (OSU) and the Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT). OTREC was granted $16 million over five years and will focus funding on activities that support its theme of advanced technologies, integration of land use and transportation and healthy communities. OTREC is dedicated to stimulating and conducting collaborative multi-disciplinary research on multi-modal surface transportation issues, educating a diverse array of current practitioners and future leaders in the transportation field and encouraging implementation of research results.