The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University (PSU) has been teaching a professional workshop on Comprehensive Bikeway Design since 2009. Our 2025 workshop just wrapped up, with one of the largest groups we've had so far—twenty practitioners from fifteen different U.S. states—who came to Portland to learn from local experts the ins and outs of designing a complete bicycle network. Check out some photos from the week.
"The workshop allows us to showcase the work that has been done, and is being done, in Portland to innovate and improve bicycle safety," said John MacArthur, the lead instructor of the workshop. Over the years, workshop participants have hailed from almost every state and province in North America, as well as places overseas including Japan, New Zealand, Colombia and Mexico.
Instructors who lent their expertise to the week-long workshop include Nick Falbo, Roger Geller and Peter Koonce of the City of Portland's Bureau of Transportation; Shelley Oylear of Washington County, Oregon; and Perrin Faulkner of Toole Design.
All the instructors are leaders in their fields who have helped the greater Portland area implement numerous types of innovative bicycle facilities and treatments. At Toole Design, Faulker uses a tailored, community-based approach to design accessible spaces. Oylear has brought active transportation safety improvements to areas of Washington County that lie outside of dense urban city centers, making walking and bicycling a viable option for many suburban residents. Koonce, who was recently inducted into the Oregon State University Academy of Distinguished Engineers, is one of the leading figures in modern, multimodal traffic signal operations and has helped bring bicycle-specific traffic signals into mainstream use. Falbo's concept video and design work helped popularize the Dutch-style "protected intersection" design for American streets, and Geller is recognized internationally for introducing the "Four Types of Cyclists" framework widely used in active transportation planning circles.
The all-star lineup of instructors is one of the big draws of this workshop. Another draw is the field tours: Each day, workshop participants hop on bikes and head over to different areas of the PDX metropolitan area to explore the various treatments and different types of infrastructure that are on the ground here.
"If you have ever read the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, this is like a real-world walkthrough of all the concepts," said one 2025 workshop participant.
"The field tours were a definite highlight of the course. It was incredible to combine the classroom lecture content with field tours that provided real world examples of what we were learning and discussing in the classroom," said another participant.
A third draw? Building connections and learn from each other. The final day in the classroom is spent examining a specific challenge that each person is working on, back home, and crowdsourcing ideas and solutions with the group.
"One of the things that's unique about this course is that it brings people together from cities all over the country, and they form a sort of cohort together, sharing insights from across their different contexts," MacArthur said.
Interested in taking the workshop in the future? Sign up to be notified as soon as applications open in 2026.
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 on social media.
