People talking and looking at materials in a workshop

We held our annual flagship professional development event, Transportation & Communities, on September 13 and 14. In honor of the event's ten-year anniversary, we changed up the format: Rather than a typical conference with one-hour sessions and a keynote gathering, we offered a selection of intensive half-day workshops. See photos from the event.

The workshops gave practitioners a chance to take a deep dive into new skills in order to walk away with new tools or frameworks that could be applied to their work. We offered a review of congestion mitigation strategies, universal access and equity in pedestrian planning, and discussion on how smart technology could be implemented in suburban communities. Several workshops were based on findings from new research by the National Institute for...

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Left: Bicycles on a trail; Right: Young woman buying transit pass

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is soliciting proposals for our two 2018 Pooled Fund projects:

RFP now open; proposals due Oct 1, 2018

This project will address the need of cities and municipalities to combine bicycle data from different sources (such as manual counts, automatic counts, and crowd-sourced data from apps such as Strava) to assess an accurate accounting of bicycle traffic on a network. Current work on data fusion techniques is limited and additional research is needed to fully understand the choice of weighting techniques, inclusion of spatial vs. temporal variation in the...

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Stock image of bicycles

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2018 Small Starts request for proposals (RFP). Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by September 17, 2018.

The Small Starts grant assists researchers (based at NITC partner universities) who are interested in transportation but have not had an opportunity to undertake a small project ($20,000 or less). Read about the Small Starts projects that were funded in 2017. Projects must be consistent with NITC's theme of improving the 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

Key Dates

  • RFP Opens: July 18, 2018
  • Proposals due: September 17, 2018
  • Award Selection: Sept-Oct 2018
  • Projects begin & funds...
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Image of a street with cars

The National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research consortium, led by Portland State University, has awarded $926,000 in total funding for eleven research projects spanning five universities.

The General Research grant is NITC's flagship grant. Annually, we fund general research through a competitive, peer-reviewed RFP process for projects ($30,000 - $150,000) consistent with our theme of improving the mobility of people and goods to build strong communities.

Four of these new projects involve multi-university collaboration, and seven are advancing the transportation knowledge base by building upon an existing body of research. The new group of projects will help lead the deployment of innovative new technologies and practices to improve the safety and performance of transportation systems:

Led by Liming Wang of Portland State University with co-investigator Yao-Jan Wu of the University of Arizona
This multi-university collaboration expands upon previous research by Liming Wang,...
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The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2018 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by April 2, 2018.


Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award at least $1 million under our general research grant in 2018 for 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

Research projects must focus on transportation, with additional consideration given to projects that emphasize equity and diversity in their research and partnerships. We’re seeking projects that demonstrate a strong potential to move transportation research into practice, shape national and international conversations, and respond to the needs of practitioners and policymakers. 

Priority is given to projects that are collaborative, multidisciplinary, multi-campus, and support the development of untenured-tenure-track transportation faculty. 

Key Dates

  • Abstracts due: April 2...
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Our National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research program has awarded grant funding for a new series of Small Starts projects.

Small Starts grants assist researchers who are interested in transportation but have not yet had an opportunity to undertake a small project—$15,000 in funding or less—that supports NITC's theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation choices to foster livable communities.

The latest projects selected by NITC's executive committee support that theme in exploring livable streets, multimodal safety and transportation efficiency.

The six newly funded projects are:

  • Is There a "Buy Local" Case for Lower Travel Speeds? Testing Differences in Driver Recognition of Local Versus National Retail at Different Travel Speeds—Jonathan Bean and Arlie Adkins, University of Arizona (Full Proposal)
  • How Will Autonomous Vehicles Change Local Government Budgeting and Finance? A Case Study of Solid Waste, Drop-off/Pick-up Zones, and Parking—Benjamin Clark, University of Oregon (...
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TREC’s NITC program has made $500,000 available for grants to eligible researchers through its 2017 general research request for proposals. The RFP is the first since the NITC program expanded to include the University of Arizona and University of Texas at Arlington.

All proposals must contribute to the NITC theme, improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities, and focus on transportation. They must also show strong potential to move transportation research into practice, inform other researchers, shape national and international conversations on transportation research, and respond to the needs of practitioners and policymakers.

Projects are capped at $100,000, and we encourage PIs to propose smaller projects. Priority is given to projects that are collaborative, multi-disciplinary, multi-campus and support the development of untenured tenure-track transportation faculty.

Key Dates

  •     Abstracts due: April 14, 2017
  •     Proposal due: May 15, 2017
  •     Peer reviews: June 2017
  •     Project Selection, Awards, and Task Orders: July-August 2017
  •     Projects begin: Sept 2017

Eligibility

Only eligible faculty members and research faculty from Portland State University, University of Oregon, Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Utah, University of...

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A bus stop with a shelter, bench, and sidewalk showing people boarding the bus
 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Improving bus stops by providing shelters, seating, signage, and sidewalks is relatively inexpensive and popular among riders and local officials. Making such improvements, however, is not often a priority for U.S. transit providers because of competing demands for capital funds and a perception that amenities are not tied to measurable increases in system effectiveness or efficiency. This webinar focuses on the role that bus stops play as the point of first contact between transit agencies and their potential riders, and how the quality of that contact can influence both ridership and accessibility for riders with mobility-related disabilities. The webinar will use results from recent research sponsored by NITC and the Utah Department of Transportation looking at possible impacts that bus stop improvements made by the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) have had on stop-level ridership and demand for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) paratransit services. The results demonstrate how investments in bus stop facilities are not...

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Aerial view of urban city road with cars on the road and crosswalk. Text reads: Webinar: Land Use and Transportation Policies for a Sustainable Future.
 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Even though there are tremendous uncertainties in the timing and evolution path of the Autonomous Vehicles (AV) technology, it may become a likely reality within most MPOs' long-range regional transportation plan horizon of twenty years. Yet a recent survey of the largest MPOs in the US indicates only one of them "even mentions driverless, automated, or autonomous vehicles in its most recent RTP". One of the uncertainties in assessing the impacts of AV is their direction: on one hand, self-driving cars could increase VMT by increasing roadway capacity, lowering costs of travel; on the other, they may reduce VMT by enabling more car-sharing, improving access to transit, eliminating the fixed costs of car ownership, and reclaiming parking space. To date, there is no suitable conceptual framework or modeling tools available to MPOs for quantitatively assessing the likely long-term effects of AV or potential policy scenarios.

This project studies the possible impacts on travel and land use of the emerging AV technology and focuses on advancing this innovative mobility option by...

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PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Multimodal transportation systems (e.g., walking, cycling, automobile, public transit, etc.) are effective in increasing people’s travel flexibility, reducing congestion, and improving safety.  Therefore, it is critical to understand what factors would affect people’s mode choices. With advanced technology, such as connected and automated vehicles, cities are now facing a transition from traditional urban planning to developing smart cities. To support multimodal transportation management, this study serves as a bridge to connect speed management strategies of conventional corridors to connected vehicle corridors.

The study consists of three main components. In the first component, the impact of speed management strategies along traditional corridors was evaluated. In the second component, the impacts of the specific speed management strategies, signal retiming and...

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