New Chicago Transportation Department head will bring lessons from Oregon trip

Apr 20, 2011

When Gabe Klein starts his new job as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation, the lessons of Oregon’s transportation system will be fresh in his mind. Klein, the former director of the District (of Columbia) Department of Transportation, visited OTREC programs and student groups over several packed days in Oregon.

Klein started his tour April 6 in Eugene as an expert in residence with the Sustainable Cities Initiative and LiveMove student group at the University of Oregon. He worked his way up the Willamette Valley with meetings and presentations in Salem and Portland.

On bicycle, Klein toured Eugene’s off-street paths, including pedestrian and bicycle bridges, and the street that will carry the area’s first cycle track. He met with city and Lane Transit District officials before touring the EmX bus rapid transit system....

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Former D.C. DOT Director Gabe Klein: simple transportation solutions often best

Apr 01, 2011

For having made his career pursuing creative solutions to transportation problems, Gabe Klein cautions against getting too complex. We already know how to make livable cities, said Klein, the former director of the District (of Columbia) Department of Transportation: get people walking and bicycling.

“The bike is as old as I don’t know what,” Klein said. “But the trend is toward taking an old technology and making it easy to use and secure.”

For the Washington, D.C., area, that has involved bike sharing. The successful Capital Bikeshare program Klein oversaw has made the red rental bikes ubiquitous and taken away many of the excuses people use not to cycle, including parking, maintenance and the inability to bring a bike on long trips.

Klein will discuss his experience with Capital Bikeshare in a free seminar in Portland on Friday, April 8. He’ll work his way up the Willamette Valley Wednesday and Thursday as part of the Sustainable Cities Initiative at the University of Oregon, one of three OTREC initiatives.

Although cyclists must pay for Capital Bikeshare rentals, Klein said he aimed to avoid pricing people out of cycling. “We wanted to price it below any other form of transportation,” he said. “And we wanted to make it...

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E-Bikes in the United States

The video begins at 1:12.

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Summary: Electric bicycles (e-bikes) are well established in China and other Asian and European countries but have yet to realize their potential in the United States, although recently the number of e-bikes has been growing. Research on the economic, operational, and safety issues of e-bikes in the U.S. is limited. This research aims in part to understand if different bicycling technology, in this case electric assist bicycles or e-bikes, can reduce barriers to bicycling and encourage more bike trips and longer bike trips, and increase the diversity of people bicycling, including people with a disability or chronic injury to bicycle. Some of these barriers include trip distance, topography, time, and rider effort. E-bikes typically resemble a standard pedal bicycle with the addition of a rechargeable battery and electric motor to assist the rider with propulsion. To answer these questions, we conducted an online survey of existing e-bike users on their purchase and use decisions. Results from 553 e-bike users across North America are analyzed here. Results suggest that e-bikes are enabling users to bike more often, to more distant locations, and to carry more cargo with them. Additionally, e-bikes allow people who would otherwise not be able...

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Can There Be Equity In The Bike Lane?

What to do about e-scooters? Salt Lake can learn from other cities

Are e-bikes faster than conventional bicycles?

Learn more about our other research on e-bikes here.

Over the last couple years, electric bicycles (e-bikes) have been gaining momentum. E-bikes may play an important role in addressing cities’ transportation and public health problems by getting more people out of cars and onto bicycles. But as the number of users increase, so too will potential conflicts (actual or perceived) with other road users, causing policy questions to arise.

The current state of e-bikes regulation varies dramatically across state and local jurisdictions, causing confusion. The confusion stems from the wide variety of devices and technologies on the market, perceived overlap of legal entities’ jurisdiction over the device, outdated or absent laws and regulations, and inconsistency of terms used to describe e-bikes. This confusion creates uncertainty for manufacturers and dealers and makes riders wary of embracing e-bikes.

One of the biggest concerns people have about e-bikes and their use, especially on shared-use paths, is speed....

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Get on the bus!

Friday Transportation Seminar at Portland State University - June 1, 2018

Friday Transportation Seminar (Double Feature): Bike Share and Transit Integration & Utilitarian Skateboarding

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. With over 450 seminars presented and recorded (access the archive of seminars here), we host both visiting and local scholars to share the latest in research, technology, and implementation in transportation.

EDUCATION LIBRARY ARCHIVE

Missed the seminar or want a look back? 

 

David Soto Padín
Graduate Research Assistant at Portland State University, and President of the Students in Transportation Engineering & Planning (ITE-STEP

David...

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Giving e-bikes a try

Webinar: A National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs. Image shows three young women biking away from the camera.

Webinar: A National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Connecting with cities and bike share operators from across the United States, Portland State University conducted a nationwide scan on what programs and initiatives were running to address equity in bike share. The report “National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs” documents responses from over 70 bike share systems. This resource will help cities and operators navigate the range of actions that have been implemented to make bike share systems more equitable, examine successful strategies employed across the U.S., and understand how those successes (and challenges) are being measured and articulated. In doing so, we hope the report helps bike share systems learn from the experiences of others, innovate, and more quickly move toward greater equity. The research team will be joined by a bike share operator to discuss what they learned, best practices, and where they see the future of bike share equity programs headed.

THE RESEARCH

This webinar is based on a study funded by the Better Bike Share Partnership and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and conducted at...

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