Student presentations from TRB, week 3

Watch video

View Patrick Singleton's slides

View Ryan Dann's slides

Following the 2015 annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, this Friday seminar will showcase some of Portland State University's student TRB research.

Presenters:

Patrick Singleton, GRA in civil and environmental engineering

The theory of travel decision-making: A conceptual framework of active travel behavior

Summary: We present a unifying conceptual framework of active travel behavior called the theory of travel decision-making. It integrates seminal travel-related concepts from economics, geography, and psychology with... Read more

Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike

The video begins at 0:34.

View slides

Speaker: Joseph Broach, Ph.D. Candidate, Portland State University
Topic: Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike
Summary: Some travel routes attract people walking and cycling, while others may scare them away. What features of street environments are most important, and how do available routes affect decisions to bike or walk on a specific trip? 

Research to date has focused on either large-scale areal measures like "miles of bike lane nearby" or else has considered only shortest path routes. Neither method is suited to capturing the impact of targeted route-level policies like neighborhood greenways. This session will present a new technique for measuring bike and walk accessibility along the most likely route for a given trip. The method is applied to travel data, and results provide new insight into the relationship between route quality and travel mode choice.

Researchers explore effects of COVID-19 on urban mobility

TRB Showcase of Portland State University student research in transportation: Part 1

The video begins at 4:13.

Wei Feng: Impacts of Economic, Technological and Operational Factors on the Economic Competitiveness of Electric Commercial Vehicles in Fleet Replacement Decisions

Electric commercial vehicles (ECV) have the potential to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and pollution in urban areas. In addition, ECVs have lower per-mile operating costs and potentially lower maintenance costs. However, the initial purchase cost of ECVs is significantly higher than the purchase cost of a conventional diesel vehicle. From a purely economic perspective, there is a cost tradeoff between the low operating and maintenance costs of ECVs and their high initial capital costs.  In this paper, a fleet replacement optimization framework is employed to analyze the competitiveness of ECVs. Scenarios with different fleet utilization, fuel efficiency and sensitivity analysis of ten additional factors indicate that ECVs are more cost effective when conventional diesel vehicles’ fuel efficiency is low (8.2 miles/gallon) and daily utilization is more than 54 miles. Breakeven values of some key economic and technological factors that separate the competitiveness between ECVs and conventional diesel vehicles are calculated in all scenarios. For example, in low conventional diesel vehicle fuel efficiency and low daily utilization scenario, ECVs are more competitive when their purchase prices...

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Webinar: Individual Wayfinding in the Context of Visual Impairment, Blindness, and Deafblindness

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

In this presentation we will highlight our past research on human indoor-outdoor wayfinding on an urban college campus. Our work is aimed at facilitating independent travel for people with blindness and low vision. Our research was funded by two successive grants from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities/US Department of Transportation. One of the central research questions sought to capture wayfinding preferences, information needs, and lived experiences of blind and low-vision pedestrian travelers. The projects afforded close collaboration with external partners, and foremost the American Printing House for the Blind. Our focus in the presentation will be on the...

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Travel Time Reliability; Pedestrian Crossing Behavior

Two MURP presentations

The video begins at 4:15.

Transportation Data Education: Intro to R

Join us for a three day introductory in-person workshop on R

September 10–12, 9:30am - 4:30pm

Tired of finding errors in your spreadsheets that perpetuate and cascade through your work? Still trying to cram “big” data into tiny worksheets? Wish you had an easier way to easily share data and results with others? Want to better manage and maintain your workflow? Always wanted to learn R and version control but never found the time? If any of your answers are yes, then this course is for you!

After several years of hiatus, we are excited to host an "Intro to R" workshop where we will cover the following:

  • Coding and scripting basics
  • Intro to data wrangling and visualizations
  • Version control & best practices
  • Where to go for help and how to expand your skills

Prerequisites for the Workshop

Basic knowledge and experience working with quantitative data; experience and skills in a different programming language or data processing and statistical software is helpful but not required.

Course Requirements

Please bring your own laptop and have the following software installed prior to the workshop. If you are using a work machine, please make sure you have reached out to your IT department to have these programs installed:

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Webinar: Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies on Oct 16, 2018

Webinar: Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies

EDUCATION LIBRARY ARCHIVE

Missed the webinar or want a look back? 

OVERVIEW

There is nationwide interest in supporting sustainable and active transportation modes such as bicycling and walking due to the many benefits associated with them, including reduced congestion, lower emissions and improved health. Although the number of bicyclists is increasing, safety remains a top concern. In urban areas, a common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. While geometric treatments and pavement markings have been studied, there is a lack of research on signal timing treatments to address right-hook bicycle-vehicle conflicts.

Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies, published in April 2018, is the first study to explore bicycle signal control strategies for addressing bicycle-vehicle conflicts. This study analyzed the operational impacts of traditional...

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Portland's Cycle Track and Buffered Bike Lanes: Are they working?

The video begins at 2:04.

Abstract: Findings will be presented on an evaluation of two innovative bicycle facilities installed in late summer and early fall 2009 in downtown Portland aimed at providing a more separated and comfortable experience for cyclists. The SW Broadway cycle track (near PSU) and the couplet of buffered bike lanes on SW Stark and SW Oak were evaluated to understand how they are functioning on multiple levels. Each facility involved removing a motor vehicle lane by restriping to provide additional roadway space to bicyclists. The facilities were evaluated after they had been in place for approximately one year. Data collected to support this evaluation consisted of surveys of multiple user groups for each facility type, and video data collected by the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation at intersections along each of the routes to understand the facilities' impact on traffic flow, operations and user interactions.

Bicycle & Pedestrian Overcrossings; Carsharing Payment Integration

Two MURP presentations

The video begins at 3:53.

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