Portland State Students Work with the Community to Improve Pedestrian Safety Near César Chávez School

Jul 21, 2021

Last year, a car driver hit a César Chávez K-8 School student at the intersection of N. Portsmouth Ave and N. Willis Blvd in Portland, OR. It underscored what parents, teachers and Portland community members have been demanding for many years: increased investment in traffic safety at schools during pick up and drop off hours.

What’s more: Portsmouth’s residents already had a lot of ideas of how to improve pedestrian safety at this intersection.

Seeking to help the community take action on these ideas, Safe Routes to School advocacy professionals William Francis and Hanna Howsmon at Community Cycling Center and César Chávez teacher Sam Balto recommended this intersection as a potential quick build project for the Better Block PSU pathway program-–a partnership between the volunteer-led group Better Block PDX and the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University that pairs transportation students with community-led projects. 

“PSU students support community members with the technical aspects of infrastructure improvements–elevating and materializing their ideas by developing plans, designs, and engineering concepts. It’s a shift from the status quo with a ground-up approach, and their transportation expertise can help community members in navigating the permit process or proposing informed solutions to the city,” shared Hau Hagedorn, TREC Associate...

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PSU Graduate Researcher Huajie Yang Explores Light Rail's Impacts on Ridership and Congestion

Jul 09, 2021

Dr. Huajie Yang, who graduated in 2020 with a PhD in Urban Studies and Planning from Portland State University, devoted his doctoral research to studying the impacts of light rail transit. His dissertation, "Short-term and Long-term Effects of New Light Rail Transit Service on Transit Ridership and Traffic Congestion at Two Geographical Levels," quantitatively examines the effect of new Light Rail Transit (LRT) services on transit ridership and traffic congestion over time.

Connect with Huajie Yang on LinkedIn

Yang examined light rail's impacts at two different geographic levels. At the corridor level, he conducted case studies of two light rail lines in the Portland, Oregon region (TriMet's Green and Orange MAX lines). At the regional level, he used a synthetic control method to construct a control Urbanized Area that closely approximates the counterfactual transit ridership and traffic congestion scenario - in the absence of light rail projects - in three urbanized areas across America.

The results of the corridor-level study suggest that both the Green and Orange lines increased transit ridership in the short and long term, and relieved traffic congestion in the short term, while having no...

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NITC Dissertation Fellow Travis Glick Develops System-Level Transit Performance Metrics

Jun 22, 2021

We're proud to announce the publication of a new NITC dissertation: "Methodologies to Quantify Transit Performance Metrics at the System-Level," by Travis Glick of Portland State University.

Performance metrics have typically focused at two main scales: a microscopic scale that focuses on specific locations, time-periods, and trips; and, a macroscopic scale that averages metrics over longer times, entire routes, and networks. When applied to entire transit systems, microscopic methodologies often have computational limitations while macroscopic methodologies ascribe artificial uniformity to non-uniform analysis areas. These limitations highlight the need for a middle approach. This dissertation presents a mesoscopic analysis based around timepoint-segments, which are a novel application of an existing system for many transit agencies.

In the United States, fix-route transit is typically defined by a small subset of bus stops along each route, called timepoints. For this research, routes are divided into a consecutive group of bus stops with one timepoint at the center. Each timepoint-segment includes all data collected in that segment during one hour of operation. Visuals for congestion and headway performance, based on the aggregated datasets, are designed to...

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MURP student Francisco Ibarra Interns at Oregon Department of Transportation

May 21, 2021

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is a department of the state government of the U.S. state of Oregon responsible for systems of transportation. It was first established in 1969 and has a passionate, talented, diverse workforce of almost 5,000. This story was originally shared in ODOT'S February 2021 Oregon Toll Program newsletter.

Francisco Ibarra, a Toll Program planning intern, is currently attending Portland State University for his Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) degree. Francisco is from East Portland and has lived in Gresham for most of his life. Francisco knows the importance of collaborative planning with community members.

As a research assistant to the Toll Program Equity and Mobility Advisory Committee [at ODOT], Francisco attends meetings, listens to questions, and follows up with researched answers. Recently, he completed research on air quality monitoring related to transportation and health. He is ready to provide help to support the Toll Program and committee in every way he can.

"This project is...

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Announcing the New Better Block PSU Projects!

Apr 22, 2021

Since 2013, local transportation activist group Better Block PDX has developed partnerships with organizations across the Portland Metro area. Most notable were the connections that emerged between the communities’ needs for creative transportation solutions and the expertise of Portland State University (PSU) transportation students.

That collaboration evolved into Better Block PSU, a pathway program led by PSU’s Transportation Research and Education Center that integrates tactical urbanism and placemaking into the engineering and planning curriculum at PSU. Most recently we shared an update on Re-Imagining a Safer Route to the César Chávez School, which advanced to the Spring 2021 engineering capstone.

We’re excited to announce the latest projects to have been accepted into the Better Block PSU pathway program:

  • City of Independence Neighborhood Greenways: This project will help create a low-stress biking and walking network through Independence connecting local schools, businesses, and parks.
  • Community Green Space for Parkrose: This project plans to create a pathway from the Parkrose neighborhood to the Columbia Slough to increase access to green space and community knowledge of the Slough.
  • Arleta Triangle Transformation...
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Student Spotlight: Jai Daniels, Portland State University

Mar 30, 2021

Jai Daniels is a first-year Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) student at Portland State University, currently working with PSU's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) as a Graduate Research Assistant under faculty advisor John MacArthur. She is interested in urban livability, bicycle and pedestrian planning, transit planning, and the intersection between urban planning and the environment.

LinkedIn

Tell us about yourself?

I grew up in a small town in North Carolina, often referred to as 'Mayberry.' Living near the Blue Ridge Parkway and not having much to do, apart from spending time outside, largely influenced both my passion for environmental conservation and my desire to travel. This in turn influenced what I chose to study. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019 with a degree in environmental studies and minor in city and regional planning. Now, I live in Portland and am in my first year of the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program at Portland State University. Outside of school, I enjoy listening to podcasts, watching movies, taking film pictures, and hiking.

What (or who) has influenced your career path in transportation?

As an undergraduate student, I studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, which sparked my...

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Introducing the Newest NITC Dissertation Fellow: Kelly Rodgers of Portland State

Feb 03, 2021

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is proud to introduce a new dissertation fellow: Kelly Rodgers of Portland State University. Four other NITC dissertation fellows were announced in summer 2020. Our NITC Dissertation fellowships applications are accepted on a rolling basis. 

Kelly’s dissertation project will focus on "The use and influence of health indicators in transportation decision-making."

Research on health and transport has increased significantly in the past 20 years, both across health and transportation fields. Researchers and practitioners have called for the use of health indicators in transportation, which come amidst the growing emphasis on the use of indicators for transportation plans and projects in general. The underlying hope is that new procedural arrangements, such as measuring and tracking indicators, can turn policy goals into practice. This research project will explore the use and influence of health indicators in transportation using a mixed methods approach.

...
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Re-Imagining a Safer Route to the César Chávez School with Better Block PSU

Feb 01, 2021
Photos by Sam Balto

Since 2013, local transportation activist group Better Block PDX has developed partnerships with organizations across the Portland Metro area. Most notable were the connections that emerged between the communities’ needs for tactical urbanism solutions and the expertise of Portland State University (PSU) transportation students.

Over the last few years, that collaboration evolved and formalized into Better Block PSU, a pathway program that integrates tactical urbanism into the engineering and planning curriculum at PSU. Now led by PSU’s Transportation Research and Education Center, the latest project to advance through the program is Re-imagining a Safer Route to the César Chávez School: N. Willis Blvd. & N. Portsmouth Ave.

A number of teams worked with PSU Urban Planning students in the Fall of 2020, and this project from the César Chávez K-8 School community and the Community Cycling Center was chosen to move onto the second phase with the Spring 2021 PSU Civil Engineering course.

César Chávez PE teacher and project lead Sam Balto shared more about the motivation behind the project, “Not only is this intersection incredibly uninviting for the students and families walking to school...

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Two Portland State Students Awarded WTS Transportation Scholarships

Jan 19, 2021

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. Two of the five 2020/2021 scholarship awardees are Portland State University students! WTS Portland will be celebrating all of the awardees during an online happy hour on Wed, January 27th at 5PM (PT) - RSVP here.

Apy Das (Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship)

Apy Das is a master’s student in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Portland State University. She got her bachelor of science... Read more
Gabby Abou-Zeid, Katherine Keeling, and Kelly Rodgers

Eisenhower Fellowships Awarded to Three Portland State University Students

Nov 17, 2020

Three Portland State University students, all women, will receive Eisenhower Fellowships presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation at the 2021 virtual annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). Kelly Rodgers, Gabby Abou-Zeid, and Katherine Keeling have all been awarded Eisenhower fellowships before; Abou-Zeid and Keeling won the prestigious fellowship in 2020 and Rodgers in 2019. 

2021 Eisenhower Fellows of PSU

Gabby Abou-Zeid, Civil Engineering

Gabby Abou-Zeid holds a B.S. in Sustainable Built Environments from the University of Arizona and is currently a second-year Civil Engineering MSc student with transportation emphasis. Working...

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