bikeway design | Transportation Research and Education Center

NITC program awards nearly $1 million for research, education projects

Dec 09, 2013

The 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.

The 10 projects were chosen from among 25 proposals with a total request of nearly $2.25 million.

A complete list of projects and principal investigators is below:

N ational Study of BRT Development Outcomes: Arthur Nelson and Joanna Ganning, University of Utah
C rowdsourcing the Collection of Transportation...

Researchers interpret clandestine walking paths

Nov 12, 2013

Recently OTREC took a look at suburbia to see how many people were walking and biking to local destinations.

Traditionally, studies of suburban locations have found that due to the low density of suburban areas and their single-land-use patterns, active transportation is rare.

In a research project by Principal Investigator Nico Larco and Co-Investigator Robert Parker, of the University of Oregon, active transportation was found to be more common than expected in suburban areas with commercial strip destinations.

In their project “Overlooked Destinations: Suburban Nodes, Centers, and Trips to Strips,” Larco and Parker observed active travel behaviors around typical suburban commercial sites. They examined six strip malls -- four in Portland, Ore. and two in Atlanta, Ga. -- to map out the “pedshed,” or walkable zone surrounding these sites.

Investigators were surprised by what they found.

For each site, they created detailed pedestrian-network GIS maps. They compared the network extents of maps that included only publicly available, street centerline data with maps that included pedestrian networks derived from...

PSU offers transportation study abroad opportunity in the Netherlands

Oct 22, 2013

Most people in transportation circles have heard all about the Netherlands as a bicyclist’s mecca, a place where thirty-five percent of the population regularly commutes by bike. What may be less commonly known is how recent this achievement is.

In 1967, bicycling in the Netherlands was “tantamount to attempting suicide,” according to Amsterdam’s chief inspector of traffic police.

Today, the Netherlands is the safest place in the world to operate a bicycle, based on injury and fatality rates per miles traveled. In less than fifty years, their bicycle safety rates have soared and the Dutch have built a bicycle infrastructure that is the envy of the rest of the world. How did they do it?

Could Americans possibly do the same?

That’s what Portland State University transportation students aim to find out.

When PSU student Kirk Paulsen signed up to spend two weeks in the Netherlands as part of the first PSU civil engineering study abroad program, he wasn’t sure what exactly he might get out of it, but knew that he wanted to see famed Dutch bicycling facilities for himself. Paulsen was one of seven transportation students in the pilot class of 2011, and now has this to say about the experience:

“This short study abroad course is by far your best opportunity while enrolled at PSU to observe real world...

Bridges to Baccalaureate student works on Green Lane Project

Oct 11, 2013

A student participating in the Portland Bridges to Baccalaureate program completed a summer internship doing research for OTREC this year.

Yasmina Green, a 34 year old non-traditional student attending Portland Community College, was intrigued when she heard about the Bridges program. Green, who eventually hopes to get a master’s in public health at PSU, took advantage of the opportunity to secure a summer internship working in a public health-related field.

“I was a bit confused as to where I was going to go,” Green said. “Public health is so broad. The Green Lane project was something that kind of piqued my interest. I was a bike commuter.”

The Green Lane Project, a project of People For Bikes, has selected six cities to serve as pilot sites for new designs and approaches to creating comfortable, separated bike routes. OTREC researchers are involved in assessing the safety, operations, economic effects, user experience and perceptions of the new protected bikeways.

Green assisted researchers Jennifer Dill, Chris Monsere, and...

'Straphanger' author gives his take on transit systems at Oregon Transportation Summit

Sep 05, 2013

At age 8, Taras Grescoe decided that his Vancouver, B.C., residential street had too many cars chugging past. So he removed them.

“I completely redesigned our city block and modeled with Monopoly hotels what it would look like without cars,” Grescoe said. “I was this 8-year-old urban planning geek in the making.”

While his career took a different path, those early transportation experiences shaped a worldview Grescoe outlines in his latest book, “Straphanger.” Grescoe will present his observations as the keynote speaker for the Oregon Transportation Summit Sept. 16.

Register for the summit through the following link:
https://trec.pdx.edu/OTRECUS/events/subpage/OTS/page1

The author of nonfiction essays and books including “Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood” Grescoe is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Independent and National Geographic Traveler and has written for Gourmet, Salon and Wired.

If moving from a...

Pronovost bicycle lecture inspires advocacy and teamwork

Aug 28, 2013

The Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) opened the Ann Niles Transportation Lecture series Monday, August 26 with a talk by Jean-Francois Pronovost, the vice president for development and public affairs at advocacy group Vélo Québec. The Ann Niles lecture series serves as a legacy to Ann Niles, who was a strong advocate for livable neighborhoods and served on many boards and committees related to transportation in Portland. OTREC and IBPI are proud to be part of an ongoing collaborative effort to make Portland a more livable city.

Pronovost was preceded at Monday's lecture by OTREC director Jennifer Dill, who opened the talk with remarks about Niles' spirit of advocacy and passion, and the opportunity that Portlanders have to change their city for the better. Jean-Francois Pronovost has been instrumental in building the world’s longest bicycle greenway, the Route Verte, which runs 3,100 miles through the province of Quebec. He described the process of building partnerships with nonprofits, local businesses and community groups in order to make the greenway a reality. Pronovosts's enthusiasm for bicycling was infectious; his presentation included highlights from Vélo Québec's annual rides, including a kids-only ride with no parents allowed, as well as photos from a...

How to build the world's longest bike touring route: Jean-Francois Pronovost

Aug 23, 2013

(First published by BikePortland.org)

Portland has a network of neighborhood greenways, and they're great. But Jean-Francois Pronovost's is 3,100 miles long. That's approximately the distance from Portland to Nicaragua.

The Greenway (Route Verte in Pronovost's native French) is a bike route network running all over the Canadian province of Quebec. On Monday, the vice president for development and public affairs at advocacy group Vélo Québec visits Portland to share lessons from this project and others in the first annual Ann Niles Transportation Lecture, a major new series produced by Portland State University's Institute for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation.

The event is free, though space is limited to 240. On Thursday, BikePortland spoke with Pronovost to learn more about his life's work, the best parts of Quebec bike touring and how his hometown of Montreal managed to replace 320 auto parking spaces with a downtown protected lane that carries 9,000 bikes per day. Questions and answers were edited for space.

Can you describe your most famous achievement, the Route Verte??

The Route Verte [pronounced with hard Ts...

IBPI faculty workshop brings active transportation to the classroom

Aug 07, 2013

IBPI, or the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation, is a center for research and learning that is focused on bicycle and pedestrian travel.

Based at Portland State University, the group's aim is to advance bicycling and walking as integral elements of the transportation system in Oregon’s communities. July 24 -26 IBPI hosted a faculty workshop to help transportation professors integrate bicycle and pedestrian topics into their courses.

Aimed at faculty members teaching transportation courses within an accredited planning or engineering program at the university level, the workshop included curriculum, guidebooks, and field trips to gain first-hand knowledge of bicycle and pedestrian facilities in Portland, Oregon.

It was kept small, to allow for discussion and interaction. The workshop's 15 participants were first given the chance to describe the existing gaps in their courses and what they hoped to gain from the workshop, then guided through a two-day series of activities tailor-made to fit their needs.

Their goals ranged from specific to general, requesting ways to incorporate GIS analysis into bicycle and pedestrian courses, suggestions for how to integrate active travel performance measures with typical vehicular performance measures, and generally a deeper understanding of bicycle research.

Robert Bertini (Portland...

OTREC welcomes new research and education program administrator

Jul 22, 2013

OTREC extends a warm welcome to our newest staff member, Susan Peithman. Susan started work July 22 as OTREC's new Research and Education Program Administrator, who will serve to help allocate research funds to various transportation projects.

Peithman has lived in Portland, Oregon for six years and loves the city. She grew up in the Midwest, and says that Portland is a different world from Kansas City, Kansas, where she spent her education and early career.

She obtain her Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and afterward worked for the City of Chicago in the area of bicycle and pedestrian transportation.

Bicycling has been her primary means of transportation for 13 years, and she is always glad to see research that improves bicycle safety and infrastructure.

She has also spent time working for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, as well as for Alta Planning & Design, a planning firm based in Portland whose mission is to improve communities "one trip, one step, one street, park, trail, and intersection at a time."

During her time at Alta, Peithman became familiar with OTREC and its research priorities, and says that she is pleased to be part of an organization that sponsors some of the best...

OTREC researchers make AASHTO's top 16 high value research projects

Jul 19, 2013

OTREC researchers Jennifer Dill, Chris Monsere and Nathan McNeil of Portland State University recently received an honor from AASHTO.

AASHTO, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, works with a committee whose role it is to proactively promote quality and excellence in research.

Each year at its annual meeting, AASHTO's Research Advisory Committee (RAC) selects four projects from each of its four regions to form a "Sweet Sixteen" group of high value research projects.

At this year’s RAC meeting, which took place July 15 through the 18, a project by Dill, Monsere and McNeil made the Sweet Sixteen.

The project, “District Department of Transportation Bicycle Facility Evaluation,” was funded by DDOT (the District of Columbia’s transportation department) in an effort to improve the city’s bicycling infrastructure.

The project's investigators took a look at innovative bicycle facilities installed at three locations in Northwest D.C. which were designed to provide increased safety, comfort, and convenience for cyclists. The first was a...

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