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Keeping Pace with Rapidly Changing Environmental Justice Populations in Transportation Planning

Apr 18, 2019
Principal Investigator: Aaron Golub, Portland State University
Learn more about this research by viewing the Executive Summary and the full Final Report on the Project Overview page, or watching a recording of the January 2019 webinar.

Since 1994, every Federal agency must develop a strategy for addressing “environmental justice” (EJ) – the disproportionately adverse human health or environmental effects on low-income and minority populations (sometimes called “EJ Populations”). In transportation planning this means including those communities' voices in the planning process, and evaluating the social impacts early on in the planning and project development process.

But what happens if EJ Populations move or grow during the sometimes decade-long project development process?

"If you're in a community that is changing, can you rely on forecasting to look ahead and have a detailed view of EJ impacts into the...

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Mike McQueen

Portland State Civil Engineering Student Mike McQueen Awarded YPT National Streetlight Graduate Fellowship

Apr 15, 2019

The Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is pleased to announce that Mike McQueen, a first year master's student studying transportation, has been awarded the Young Professionals in Transportation StreetLight Graduate Fellowship. He was also one of seven Portland State University students to be awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship at this year's annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board.

Young Professionals in Transportation (YPT) is an international nonprofit coalition of organizations which helps provide professional development, fellowship, and networking for young professionals in the transportation field. This is the first year that YPT has offered the Graduate Fellowship award, thanks to a partnership with StreetLight Data, a transportation analytics firm. Mike was selected from an international pool of applicants.

The award includes a plaque, one year of YPT membership, a monetary scholarship, and one month of access to StreetLight Insight. Insight is a platform that transforms anonymous, archival location data derived from millions of mobile devices into useful metrics that describe travel patterns. Mike plans to use the StreetLight Insight to assist his...

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Cars waiting at a traffic signal

Exploring New Solutions to Urban Congestion Through a Network of Traffic Signal Controls

Apr 04, 2019
Photo by Canetti
Principal Investigator: Gerardo Lafferriere, Portland State University
Learn more about this research by viewing the Executive Summary and the full Final Report on the Project Overview page.

Automobile traffic congestion in urban areas comes with significant economic and social costs for everyone. According to the 2015 Urban Mobility Report, the total additional cost of congestion was $160 billion. As more people move to metropolitan areas, the problems only intensify. The latest NITC report offers a new approach to urban traffic signal control based on network consensus control theory which is computationally efficient, responsive to local congestion, and at the same time has the potential for congestion management at the network level.

Traffic signals represent a significant bottleneck. As...

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WTS Portland 2018 Scholars - Polina Polikakhina, Stephanie Lonsdale, and Sabina Roan

Three Portland State University Students Awarded WTS 2018 Scholarships

Mar 18, 2019

Three Portland State University students from the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Nohad Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning received 2018 WTS Portland scholarships. Each year, the Portland Chapter of WTS bestows scholarships to assist exceptional women in their educational pursuits in the field of transportation. The scholarships are competitive and based on the applicant’s specific goals, academic achievements, and transportation related activities.

WTS is an international organization that supports women in transportation through professional development, mentorship, leadership training, and so much more to support their advancement in the transportation profession. We're proud to be a local partner with the Portland Chapter of WTS, even more so of these students advancing their transportation careers and the recognition for their achievements so far.

Through our national research center housed here at TREC, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC...

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Pedestrians crossing a street

Expanding Pedestrian Modeling Tools Beyond the Portland Region

Mar 06, 2019
Principal Investigator: Kelly Clifton, Portland State University
Learn more about this research by viewing the full Final Report on the Project Overview page.

The latest NITC report offers improved tools for pedestrian modeling.

Led by Kelly Clifton of Portland State University, researchers had previously created the the MoPeD pedestrian demand model as well as a pedestrian index of the environment (PIE) for forecasting pedestrian travel. The PIE index improved the sensitivity of walk trip models by incorporating contextual features of the built environment that affect walking behavior in the Portland, Oregon region. Read about Clifton's previous body of work on context-specific modeling.

Useful for academic researchers in transportation, Clifton's research provides a framework for incorporating pedestrian travel behavior forecasts into traditional four-step travel demand models.

Since the method was based on Portland, the next step was to adapt the tools for wider use. In this new report, Clifton and Jaime Orrego-Onate of...

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Pedestrians cross near a light rail amid mixed-use development

NITC Invites Submissions for 2019 General Research RFP

Mar 05, 2019

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2019 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by March 29, 2019.

Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award up to $1,000,000 to research projects that support NITC’s theme: improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. Our theme includes a few key topics:

  • Increasing access to opportunities
  • Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure
  • Advancing innovation and smart cities
  • Developing data, models, and tools

2019 RESEARCH PRIORITIES

The NITC Advisory Board has provided input into several research priorities that relate to multimodal transportation data and the transportation-land use-housing connection. NITC is prioritizing the funding of proposals that directly addresses research questions related to:

Developing Data, Models and Tools. Agencies are confronting a plethora of new mobility options along with new data sources to support transportation research, planning, and analysis. Several priority research areas have been identified to increase understanding: 

  • Collection of multimodal data...
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Cars on the freeway in a desert setting

Higher Speed Limits Lead to Increase in Serious Crashes in Eastern Oregon

Feb 20, 2019
Principal Investigator: Christopher Monsere, Portland State University
Learn more about this research by viewing the full Final Report on the Project Overview page.

A new report by Christopher Monsere and Sirisha Kothuri, researchers in Portland State University's department of civil and environmental engineering, found a direct correlation between increased speed limits and an increase in serious crashes in Eastern Oregon. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) funded the study examining issues related to changes in posted speed limits.

Speed limits on approximately 1,400 miles of highways and interstates in Eastern Oregon were increased by the Oregon legislature effective March 1, 2016. Using four years of data, Monsere, Kothuri and researcher Jason Anderson examined speeds in relation to crash frequency and severity from the year after the speed limits increased compared with the three previous years. On sections where the speed limit was raised to 65 mph for trucks (primarily the interstates), truck-involved crashes more than doubled.

In response to this study, ODOT is already taking some safety measures after PSU’s analysis. Learn more in the East...

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PSU students

Transportation Undergraduate Research Fellowship (TURF) Applications are Open for 2019

Jan 28, 2019

For the second year in a row, we're opening up an exciting opportunity for undergraduate students interested in transportation: Spend a summer at Portland State University to learn more about the world of research in transportation through our Transportation Undergraduate Research Fellowship (TURF) program. This program is open to current undergraduate students from any university who are interested in learning more about transportation engineering or planning research. 

Hosted at PSU, selected students will be paired with a PSU faculty mentor (from either the College of Urban and Public Affairs or the Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science). The student will carry out research on a transportation project for ten weeks at 40 hours per week. TURF Fellows are provided a $7,500 stipend, but must find and fund their own lodging.

Decisions will be made by March 29, 2019. Contact us at asktrec@pdx.edu with any questions.

APPLY FOR TURF 2019 (by...

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Eisenhower Fellowships Awarded to Seven Portland State University Students

Jan 23, 2019

Seven Portland State University graduate students received Eisenhower Fellowships presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation at this year's annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB): Mike McQueen, Travis Glick, Greg Norton, Jael Wettach-Glosser and Santiago Espinosa Wild of the Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science, and Baxter Shandobil and Kelly Rodgers of the Nohad Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University.

Glick, Norton and Wettach-Glosser also won Eisenhower Fellowships last year, making this their second year in a row to earn the prestigious award.

If you missed seeing these students present at TRB, it's not too late to check out their research! You can catch up with them on February 7 at TRB Aftershock, where Portland State students' TRB posters will be on display in the Engineering Building.

Read about other Portland State University research at TRB by checking out our 2019 Highlights.

...

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Transportation Expertise at PSU: Twenty-Six Researchers Share Findings at Largest Annual Gathering of Transportation Professionals in D.C.

Jan 09, 2019

Each year, Portland State University researchers make a showing at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), and 2019 so far is living up to expectations. See below for a few highlights from the more than 26 PSU researchers (including 11 students) who are presenting this year in D.C., and follow us on Twitter for live updates. See when & where all PSU researchers will be presenting in our handy guide.

Download the PSU at TRB 2019 Guide (PDF).

Also, we invite you to a scavenger hunt: Visit PSU poster sessions to collect all of this year's TREC at TRB sticker variants!

Monday, January 14 (3:45pm–5:30pm)

Current Issues in Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies Poster Session

John Macarthur of the Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) and graduate student Michael Harpool will present "Survey of Oregon Electric Vehicle Owners: Understanding...

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