A group led by Krista Hager worked on a concept design for bicycle parking at the Goose Hollow eastbound MAX Station in southwest Portland, Ore.
Bicycle and pedestrian safety has emerged as a top priority for U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and the Department of Transportation. With this in mind, the department’s top research official visited Portland State University, home to the U.S. DOT-designated national center for livable communities.
Greg Winfree, the assistant secretary for research and technology, visited Portland State’s transportation research and education center June 13. Center Director Jennifer Dill and researcher Christopher Monsere gave Winfree a tour of the center’s living laboratory: Portland’s active transportation infrastructure.
Winfree, an advocate for improving safety for vulnerable road users, explored the city’s various bicycle safety efforts, including bike boulevards, protected bike lanes, bike boxes, bike-specific signals and signage. He also learned of pedestrian research involving traffic signals, crossings and...
Read moreA research study released Monday by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities program offers the most comprehensive evaluation of protected bicycle lanes to date. The study, “Lessons from the Green Lanes: Evaluating Protected Bike Lanes in the U.S.,” examines recently installed protected bike lanes in five of the six founding PeopleForBikes Green Lane Project cities and provides the scientific basis for decisions that could improve bicycling in cities across the United States.
Protected bike lanes, sometimes called cycle tracks, are on-street lanes separated from traffic by curbs, planters, parked cars or posts to help organize the street and make riding a bike appealing for people of all ages and abilities. Because protected bike lanes are relatively new to the U.S., little academic research has existed to help leaders evaluate the risks and rewards of the investment in putting the facilities on the ground.
This study provides definitive evidence that people feel safe riding in protected lanes and that people traveling by car or foot also support building more protected lanes to separate bicycles and automobiles. It also provides insight on the safety, use and economic effect of protected lanes.
THE METHODOLOGY: FIVE CITIES
Researchers visited each of the five...
Read moreOTREC researcher Miguel Figliozzi details some of the work on an Oregon Department of Transportation project, "Design and Implementation of Pedestrian and Bicycle Specific Data Collection Methods in Oregon," in this video produced by the Federal Highway Administration.
The project reviewed collection methods such as tube counters and loop detectors for accuracy and looked at using count numbers to deterimine average annual pedestrian and bicycle traffic at intersections.
Figliozzi was lead researcher on the project, with Christopher Monsere. Both are associate professors of civil and environmental engineering at Portland State University.
OTREC's Krista Nordback was also involved in the project, as were graduate students Pamela Johnson and Bryan Blanc. More information on the project is at:
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/TD/TP_RES/pages/activeprojects.aspx#SPR_754
Krista Nordback, an OTREC staff researcher, won the Outstanding Paper award from the Transportation Research Board's Bicycle Transportation Committee. The award honors Nordback's paper, "Measuring Traffic Reduction from Bicycle Commuting," which was also featured here:
https://trec.pdx.edu/OTRECUS/news/entry/does_driving_drop_when_cycling_spikes
The paper marked the first research to document a statistically significant drop in motor vehicle traffic during a bike-to-work event. The paper is available to download here or through the link above.
The award is given to the best paper submitted to the Committee on Bicycle Transportation for the 2014 TRB annual meeting, held Jan. 12-16 in Washington, D.C. The committee reviewed 85 papers, using anonymous peer reviewers and committee members.
More information on OTREC's presence at the TRB annual meeting is at:
https://trec.pdx.edu/OTRECUS/news/otrec_at_trb
Information on the Committee on Bicycle Transportation is at:
The Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation has unveiled the most ambitious year of professional development offerings in its history.
For the first time, the schedule includes Webinars, with the first taking place Feb. 27. Offerings also include courses and workshops geared toward practitioners and university faculty members. There’s also a two-week study abroad opportunity to learn about sustainable transportation in the Netherlands.
The course offerings include a newly added advanced bicycle design and engineering workshop. The workshop is geared toward professionals who have taken the original IBPI course or who serve communities with a developed bicycle network.
“More than 120 professionals have taken the course since 2008,” said Hau Hagedorn, who manages the IBPI program. “We’ve reached the threshold of educating professionals where there’s the need to take this to the next level of expertise.”
Continuing education credits are available for each workshop and Webinar. Click here for details on the individual course pages.
Registration is now open for IBPI’s inaugural Webinar on Feb. 27: “We are Traffic: Creating Robust Bicycle and Pedestrian Count Programs.” As agencies looking to improve bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure have learned, it doesn’t count if it’s not counted....
Read moreNote: In advance of the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting, the biggest forum on the transportation research calendar, OTREC.us is profiling some of the researchers who will present their work.
The bicycle counts suggested that, on Bike to Work Day, more people did bike to work. But did fewer people drive?
OTREC staff researcher Krista Nordback took up the issue and will present her findings Monday, Jan. 13 at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
The bike count data from sites across Boulder, Colo., certainly impressed Nordback. “Bike to Work Day has this huge spike,” she said. “The bike counts double at a lot of the count sites.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could see something similar with the motor vehicle count data?”
In a twist that might only happen in Boulder, with its ample bike counters, Nordback had a harder time tracking down the motor vehicle counts. She lucked out, finding that the city’s red-light cameras had been counting cars alongside their primary job of catching red-light runners.
Those motor vehicle counts showed a consistent drop on Bike-to-Work days compared with average workdays in June and July. It was a small drop, but even finding that was unprecedented: no studies had documented a statistically significant drop in motor vehicle counts during any bike-to-work event.
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Read moreThe NITC program's executive committee has selected a new roster of projects for funding under the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, or NITC, program. The committee chose 10 projects, totaling $900,000, under the NITC theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation to foster livable communities.
The projects are national in scope and reflect priority areas including transit supply and outcomes, and pedestrian and bicyclist behavior.
Projects selected include:
- A bicycle and pedestrian miles traveled project for Washington state.
- A study that measures the effectiveness on social media on advancing public transit.
- A look into crowdsourcing the collection of data on transportation behavior.
- A national study of Bus Rapid Transit outcomes.
A complete list of projects and principal investigators is below:
- National Study of BRT Development Outcomes: Arthur Nelson and Joanna Ganning, University of Utah
- Crowdsourcing the Collection of Transportation...