active transportation | Transportation Research and Education Center

Ann Niles lecture series brings world-class transportation speaker to Portland State

Jul 16, 2013

The Ann Niles Transportation Lecture series opens Aug. 26 with a lecture from Jean-François Pronovost of Vélo Québec titled "Growing a World-Class Cycling Culture: Lessons from Québec." The series is sponsored by the Ann Niles Transportation Lecture Endowment and serves as a legacy to Ann Niles, an advocate for livable neighborhoods.

Philip Niles created the endowment with a gift to the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation, or IBPI, in honor of his late wife. Ann Niles was a strong advocate for livable neighborhoods and served on many transportation-related boards and committees in Portland.

The lecture series keeps alive the spirit of Ann Niles' advocacy. Niles pushed for better sidewalks and crosswalks to make Portland a safe and comfortable place to walk, and for bicycle routes and parking to do the same for bicycling.

"This inaugural Ann Niles Transportation Lecture, and all those that follow, help spread Ann's passion for creating livable neighborhoods to students, practitioners and the greater community," said OTREC Director Jennifer Dill.

The series' first speaker, Pronovost, has helped bring active transportation into the lives of people in communities across Québec. As vice president for development and public affairs for Vélo Québec, he helps develop new projects and partnerships.

One of the...

Portland State University takes Seattle bike symposium by storm

Jun 26, 2013

Portland, Oregon is known for being a bike city, even called America's Best Bike City by Bicycling Magazine, so it's no surprise at all that Portland State University is full of bike enthusiasts.

Nowhere was that more clearly demonstrated than in Seattle last week, when 14 students and faculty from Portland State turned up to present their research at the International Bicycle Urbanism Symposium.

The Symposium, held on June 19-22 at the University of Washington, explored ways to plan cities around biking. There were international plenary panelists from China, The Netherlands, and New Zealand to offer a look at urban cycling around the world, and a mixture of research into bike-related planning efforts in the United States.

Portland State was there in full force. Faculty researchers Jennifer Dill and John MacArthur presented research on the use of e-bikes in the United States, and what this could mean for the bicycle mode share.

PSU professor Miguel Figliozzi outlined ways of modeling the effects of weather on cycling ridership; a particularly relevant factor in the rainy Pacific...

Utah doctoral candidate Calvin Tribby becomes NITC research fellow

Jun 19, 2013

Calvin Tribby, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, was recently awarded one of NITC's 2013 dissertation fellowships.

Tribby is a doctoral student in the Geography Department at the University of Utah. His research focuses primarily on active transportation.

While examining the influences of the built environment on people’s travel mode choices, he also takes a look at the social context and perceptions revolving around active transportation modes.

Some of his work is part of a five-year National Institutes of Health grant to study the health outcomes and transportation choices of residents in response to changes in their neighborhood built environment.

Many of these changes can have an observable impact on residents’ overall health and lifestyle. Part of the NIH study includes observing the effects of a new light rail line and a “complete street” rehabilitation in Salt Lake City.

In his research, Tribby finds ways to “summarize walkability” within activity spaces; or to provide an assessment of a neighborhood from the point of view of an active commuter, with...

Transportation students present at first Portland State research symposium

May 08, 2013

Five OTREC-supported student transportation researchers presented their work Wednesday at Portland State University's first Student Reserach Symposium. Tara Goddard and Katherine Bell presented their work in panel sessions, while Sam Thompson, Patrick Singleton and Oliver Smith presented posters.

Goddard presented her paper, "Are Bicycling and Walking 'Cool'?: Adolescent Attitutes About Active Travel," in the public health and urban studies session. She'll offer an in-depth take on the same topic at noon May 24 for OTREC's Friday transportation seminar. Click here for more information.

Bell's paper, "Evaluation of Smart Phone Weight-Mile Truck Data for Supporting Freight Modeling, Performance Measures and Planning," details some of her work with civil engineering associate professor Miguel Figliozzi. Click here to download a version of the paper.

Thompson's poster was "A Study of Bicycle-Signal Compliance Employing Video Footage;" Singleton's poster was "A Theory of Travel Decision-Making: Applications for Active Travel;" Smith's was "The Effects of Mode Choice on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Portland, Oregon."

The...

New York sixth graders get hands-on experience with active transportation data

Mar 14, 2013

OTREC turned its education efforts on a decidedly younger crowd March 13: sixth graders. A class from Rochester, N.Y., visited Portland on a trip geared toward improving bicycling in their own community.

The students, from Genesee Community Charter School, visited the OTREC offices to learn about active transportation research methods. They took part in group exercises designed to get them thinking about the planning and engineering challenges of transportation systems set up to serve multiple transportation modes.

The highlight of the day came when the students took to Portland’s streets — OTREC’s living laboratory — to conduct research of their own. Armed with bicycle-counter tubes and infrared detectors, students counted cyclists and pedestrians passing on the Broadway cycle track on Portland State University’s campus.

Other students verified the technology with manual counters.

Students moved on to their next stop on a four-day tour of Portland with a better sense of what kind of data researchers collect and how they can use those data to inform policy. Given their experience — the students already have influenced their city on policy ranging from Erie Canal re-watering to an urban art corridor to skate parks — they stand a good chance of using Portland’s lessons to build a bike-friendly Rochester.

Participants needed for study on skateboarding as active transportation

Jan 25, 2013

Tessa Walker, a Portland State University master's student in urban planning, has launched a national survey on skateboarding for transportation for her thesis resesarch. Walker sees skateboarding as a mostly unexplored corner of active transportation, with little information available to guide urban planners.

The study is open to people 18 and older in the U.S. and Canada who have skated as a way to get around within the last five years. Responses will be kept confidential and used for research purposes only.

To take the study or learn more, visit:

http://skatestudypdx.wordpress.com/

Portland is a livable city

Apr 07, 2010

National Geographic recently described Portland as the City that “…gets almost everything right; it’s friendly, sustainable, accessible, and maybe a model for America’s future” (Cover story, Dec. 2009). Portland has a shared vision of a livable city, articulated in many different ways. It is seen in neighborhood self-help projects, big municipal investments, enlightened developers that build infill projects consistent with city plans, and the highest recycling participation rate in the country. Taken together Portland is a city that is environmentally responsible, and conscious of both street level and of global impact of doing things right.

Early History

Arguably, Portland’s first act of ‘building green’ was in 1892, when it built a reservoir network to protect and preserve the sole source of its drinking water, the pristine . Today, this 102-square mile conservation zone provides ample fresh water to a region of half million people

Fast forward almost 100 years and the same ethic motivated Portlanders to reject a Robert Moses-style highway plan...

Comparing Active Transportation Approaches in China and Europe

Mar 16, 2010

In the last of the livability seminar series, OTREC's visiting scholars program welcomed Shawn Turner from the Texas Transportation Institute. Shawn's research spans the gamut of intelligent transportation systems data to bicycle and pedestrian issues. Most recently, Shawn participated in the International Scan on Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety and Mobility. His presentation compared his experiences on the scan in Europe to those in China. During his presentation, he posed three challenges to Oregon:

How does active transportation contribute to economic development?
What is the tipping point for behavior and behavioral change?
Can vanity play a role in social acceptance?

His presentation was followed by a discussion with local agencies, faculty, students and partners along with a 10-mile tour of innovative bike infrastructure in Portland. Thank goodness...

Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike

The video begins at 0:34.

View slides

Speaker: Joseph Broach, Ph.D. Candidate, Portland State University
Topic: Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike
Summary: Some travel routes attract people walking and cycling, while others may scare them away. What features of street environments are most important, and how do available routes affect decisions to bike or walk on a specific trip?

Research to date has focused on either large-scale areal measures like "miles of bike lane nearby" or else has considered only shortest path routes. Neither method is suited to capturing the impact of targeted route-level policies like neighborhood greenways. This session will present a new technique for measuring bike and walk accessibility along the most likely route for a given trip. The method is applied to travel data, and results provide new insight into the relationship between route quality and travel mode choice.

Confessions of a Traffic Engineer: The Misuse of Level of Service and its Impact on Active Transportation

The video begins at 1:25.

The transportation engineering community is advancing methodologies to encourage active transportation. Adoption of new methodologies and standards has not been widely accepted because there remain gaps in the standards by which we determine facilities are adequate, particularly in the development review process. This is highlighted in the vocabulary we use on a daily basis, we continue to consider auto traffic congestion as something that should be reduced, when in reality it can support the encouragement of active transportation. This session will describe these challenges and identify technical procedures that would allow the development of a more balanced transportation system supportive of the local policies of the community. The case study of Portland will be used to describe specific actions where the City has acted consistent with the local policy rather than blindly accepting the national Level of Service thresholds identified in the Highway Capacity Manual.

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