Portland State University

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...

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...

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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As transit agencies modernize their fare payment systems, opportunities to pay with cash diminish. This speeds boarding and lowers the cost of operations, while also creating new sources of ridership data. Arguably, service is improved for riders as well, where payment systems work across modes, and in some cases different transit providers, creating a more seamless and simplified experience. Still, about 15% of adults in the United States are without a bank account or credit card, and many rely on restrictive cell-phone data plans or don’t have access to a smartphone. These shares are even higher for public transit users. As transit fare technologies move further from cash, these digitally-excluded riders will find it more difficult to conveniently pay their transit fares.

In the latest project to be funded under the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC)'s Pooled Fund grant program, researchers from...