Subcontract: NCHRP 15-74 Safety Evaluation of On-Street Bicycle Facility Design Features

Sponsor: National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP)

Research Team Lead: Dr. Bahar Dadashova, Texas A&M Transportation Institute

Investigators: Christopher Monsere, Sirisha Kothuri and Nathan McNeil of Portland State University; and Toole Design Group

In recent years, there have been over 600 bicyclist fatalities annually in the United States. This sobering statistic has motivated a number of recent studies, including the recently released National Transportation Safety Board study, “Bicyclist Safety on US Roadways: Crash Risks and Countermeasures (PDF). ” That report notes that midblock crashes account for a disproportionate number of bicyclist fatalities and severe crashes, and that separated on-street bicycle facilities may reduce the likelihood of these crashes. However, there are only limited data on the safety outcomes of separated on-street bikeways in the U.S., despite their increasing popularity compared to non-separated alternatives.

On-street bicycle facilities provide exclusive travel lanes for bicyclists within the roadway. Non-separated on-street bicycle facilities are horizontally delineated from motor vehicle traffic by pavement markings, such as a painted buffer or striping. Some non-separated facilities are colored either over their entire length or through conflict areas. Separated on-street bicycle facilities are separated from motor vehicle traffic both horizontally and vertically by flexible delineators, curbs, parking lanes, or other barriers.

In a newly contracted project funded by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), Texas A&M Transportation Institute with support from Portland State University and Toole Design Group will work to provide practitioners at state departments of transportation (DOTs) and other transportation agencies with data-driven guidelines for selecting context-appropriate bikeway design features. This will support the implementation of safety improvements to existing separated and non-separated on-street bicycle facilities, as well as the planning of new facilities. The guidelines will be based on an up-to-date, quantitative analysis of crash patterns as well as an evaluation of the roadway characteristics, land use patterns, and human factors that increase conflicts and the risk and severity of midblock crashes that involve bicyclists.

Seeking to address safety concerns and promote bicycling in their communities, many state and local DOTs have already installed separated bicycle facilities. Many more agencies are exploring the potential of doing the same, but need more detailed information on anticipated safety improvements of specific design features for a range of sites and contexts. The new guidance from this project will deepen our understanding of the relationship between design features and the risk of midblock (non-intersection) bicycle-involved crashes and conflicts. The research team will also identify implementation pathways that will allow practitioners to put the results of this project into practice, and directly disseminate the project results with practitioners and state DOTs.

Relatedly, this same team of PSU researchers has joined a second contract lead by Toole Design Group: NCHRP 15-73 Design Options to Reduce Turning Motor Vehicle – Bicycle Conflicts at Controlled Intersections.

The project began in September 2020, and is expected to conclude in August 2023. To stay updated about its progress and to hear about findings from other PSU transportation research, subscribe to our monthly TREC newsletter.

The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University is home to the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), and other transportation programs. TREC produces research and tools for transportation decision makers, develops K-12 curriculum to expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engages students and professionals through education.

A national non-motorized count data archive, BikePed Portal provides a centralized standard count database for public agencies, researchers, educators, and other curious members of the public to view and download bicycle and pedestrian count data. It includes automated and manual counts from across the country, and supports screenline and turning movement counts.

BikePed Portal was established in 2015 by Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) researchers at Portland State University through a pooled fund grant administered by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC). Other project partners include the Federal Highway Administration, Oregon Department of Transportation, Metro, Lane Council of Governments, Central Lane MPO, Bend MPO, Mid Willamette Valley Council of Governments, Rogue Valley Council of Governments, City of Boulder, City of Austin, Cycle Oregon, and Oregon Community Foundation.

If you’re interested in using BikePed Portal for archiving bicycle and pedestrian counts for your community, please contact us at bikepedportal@pdx.edu.

Hau Hagedorn, associate director of TREC, has been a driving force behind BikePed Portal since its conception. In early 2018 data scientist Tammy Lee joined TREC to manage our transportation data program. A primary focus of her role at TREC is the continued development and implementation of BikePed Portal, and she’s written quite a few case study blogs using BPP. Celebrating the launch of the new dashboard, we interviewed Hau and Tammy to learn more.

Before we jump into discussing BikePed Portal, could you share why access to better quality bike and ped data is so important for the transportation industry?

HAU HAGEDORN (ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, TREC at PORTLAND STATE)

In general, data is powerful in decision-making. Agencies need to know how many people are biking and walking. How many trips happen per year? Per facility? What does that look like over time? Site by site, trail by trail, system by system. Accurate, centralized data (or, lack of it) can make or break the case for building or enhancing bike and walk facilities. Right now, the lack of significant data is a barrier. One thing that we hear a lot in pedestrian studies is ‘people don't actually walk there, we never see them.’ When you actually do the work and go out and count, intersections or segments or facilities, it becomes apparent that people are using it beyond expectations. In active transportation, we are always trying to play catch-up to the levels of vehicle data that is collected and analyzed. Beyond application for case studies, data like this is critical to advancing active transportation research scope and impact. The NCHRP released some great guidance, the Guidebook on Pedestrian and Bicycle Volume Data Collection that also details some use cases across the U.S.

USE CASES FOR BICYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN COUNT DATA IN A NATIONAL ARCHIVE 

Understand how existing infrastructure is used: How many trips per year happen on a facility?  Show changes over time, site by site, trail by trail, system by system.

Demonstrate impacts with before/after studies: Communicate how funds have been used, and evaluate the effects of new infrastructure on pedestrian and/or bicycle activity.

Tell the story: Share count data in infographics, articles, grant reporting, and annual reports while answering how people are using the system and how it’s grown.

Guide prioritization: There is potential to use data for system planning, as well as prioritize where needs are, particularly for bike-ped projects.

Make the case: Use data to support grant applications and validate identified needs.

Change design: Using volume, a shared use path LOS calculator could be used to determine how wide a facility should be designed or improved.

Improve data quality: Providing count device maintainer information about the quality of the data – both filtering “bad” data and letting the maintainer know when a device may be broken.

Increase access and ease of data: Support data requests automatically so staff don’t have to individually respond to data requests.

Your team developed BikePed Portal – a central data repository for national bike and ped data. Why is this significant?

TAMMY LEE, Ph.D. (TRANSPORTATION DATA PROGRAM ADMINISTRATOR, TREC at PORTLAND STATE)

Most often agencies have a lot of count files of all different types, and they're all siloed on different computers, different machines. There isn’t consistency in how those data files are maintained, stored, or created. It can be overwhelming. So using a central data repository is an opportunity for agencies to standardize their data and store it in one shared location. That way, it's just not sitting on someone's computer but instead accessible by multiple people within an organization.

What is unique about BikePed Portal compared to what else is out there? Is there a feature you are most excited about?

HAU

U.S. cities and jurisdictions collect data for their specific entity, which means you have to go to various sites to compare the volumes of walking and biking across a state or the country. In the BikePed Portal dashboard that comparison is easier, especially with the performance measures we have set up. For example, within the Portland region, we have Metro collecting count data, we have the City of Portland collecting counts, the Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District, City of Beaverton, as well as the state of Oregon. Once we get all of that data into BikePed Portal, and these agencies authorize the view of that data, you have all of those disparate data sources in one place. It provides a more comprehensive view of what the actual volumes are across an entire network and system. I’m most excited about the potential for stronger coordination between these entities as they collaborate on infrastructure projects and other types of active transportation programs and planning.

Who are the intended users of BikePed Portal?

TAMMY 

U.S. transportation agencies, planners, and advocates who need bike/ped counts, as well as those in academia like students, researchers, and educators. Right now you can download the hourly data we have by site. There are a few sites that have years and years worth of data, which is pretty impressive for a long-term dataset. If you're a researcher, and you're trying to figure out which city or which jurisdiction has the most data, you can just poke around BikePed Portal. It saves that researcher the time and frustration of having to reach out to different cities asking, does this data exist? Can I access this data? And, once they receive the data, it's all standardized and easy to use. Versus if they had reached out to those agencies, they’re going to get some text files, csv files, handwritten pdfs, machine unreadable Excel files.

Last year we released research on bike and ped count data QA/QC from Portland State researcher Nathan McNeil. How important was this QA/QC process to the design and function of BikePed Portal?

TAMMY

We make it a point to ingest different types of data sources and put them together all in one location. You can have counts from EcoCounter, from different makers like Traffix, and manual counts, and it all gets inputted into BikePed Portal. And so because of that, and because we have a nice database in which to do it, we're able to use this really large and diverse sample size to do an analysis developing QA/QC metrics. Count data can have some really large peaks. For example in Portland, there's the World Naked Bike Ride Day - it’s huge. That day would automatically get flagged for the data owner because the volume is so high. But the data owner is given the choice to validate or invalidate it. They know their data better than any outsider. That validation process helps researchers and others who download the data; they can check, was this data QA/QC'd by the owner? If it wasn't, then they can have that chance to sort of validate it themselves and figure out if they want to use it or not.

What's next? Is there another evolution or feature in the works?

HAU

Our next goal is really broadening the user base and expanding the datasets available in BikePed Portal. Also, we’re really focused on integrating AADNMT calculations (Annual Average Daily Non-Motorized Traffic). For cities that meet a certain volume of counts, we will be providing that metric. Just like with traffic data, this gives you a sense of the volume of usage for your analysis area. If anyone is interested in learning more about BikePed Portal and how they can use it for archiving bike and pedestrian counts for your community, they can reach out to us at bikepedportal@pdx.edu.

RELATED RESEARCH

To learn more about this and other TREC research, sign up for our monthly research newsletter.

• Online Non-motorized Traffic Count Archive
• Biking and Walking Quality Counts: Using “BikePed Portal” Counts to Develop Data Quality Checks
• BikePed Portal Phase II

The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University is home to the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), and other transportation programs. TREC produces research and tools for transportation decision makers, develops K-12 curriculum to expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engages students and professionals through education.

A new paper in the Journal of Planning Literature by Michael McQueen, Gabriella Abou-Zeid, John MacArthur and Kelly Clifton of PSU took a look at micromobility. The article focuses on the role of new modes like shared e-scooters in the efforts to cultivate a more sustainable transportation system by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, providing a reliable and equitable transportation service, and enhancing the human experience. Their review of the literature shows that the sustainability impacts of these modes are at present mixed, and are likely to remain so without more targeted interventions by local stakeholders. Yet, the operations and use of micromobility systems are quickly evolving and hold promise for contributing to a more sustainable transportation system.

Read the online journal article, or access the free author version (PDF) here.

Chris Monsere, Sirisha Kothuri and Jason Anderson of Portland State University developed guidance for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) regarding the placement of Rectangular Rapid Flash Beacons, or RRFB's, in combination with median refuges on three-lane roadways. Their research explored the effect of these crossings on driver yielding behavior. For roads with volumes higher than 12,000 average daily traffic (ADT), they found high yielding rates at pedestrian crossings that had a beacon, whether or not there was a median. This demonstrates that the RRFB is a useful tool for alerting drivers to the presence of pedestrians at crosswalks. The researchers also found that for roadways with less than 12,000 ADT, the addition of a median refuge increases driver yielding. 

Read the final report.

The Impacts of the Bicycle Network on Bicycling Activity: A Longitudinal Multi-City Approach

Wei Shi, Portland State University

• Download the Final Report 

In active transportation research, plenty of attention has been given to how different types of bike infrastructure affect people's likelihood of biking. Research has demonstrated that protected bike lanes encourage more people to bike than simple painted lanes, and that most cyclists feel safer riding through a protected intersection as opposed to navigating shared space with cars. However, relatively few empirical studies have investigated how holistically connected an entire bike network is, and how different populations can be positively or negatively impacted in their decision to bike by that level of connectivity.

Wei Shi, a recent Portland State University graduate with a PhD in urban planning, wrote her doctoral thesis on "The Impacts of the Bicycle Network on Bicycling Activity: a Longitudinal Multi-City Approach." In her work she found that a well-connected bicycle network - not individual bike lane segments or intersections, but the overall connection between places - is a big factor in people’s decision to bike. This is especially true for disadvantaged populations, including females and low income families.

HOW DID THE RESEARCH DETERMINE THIS?

Theoretically, a complete bicycle network is more than the sum of its parts. Its total impact on cycling is expected to be greater than the combined impacts of each segment. Working with her PSU faculty advisor, Jenny Liu, Shi started by identifying metrics to measure the connectivity of a network. Her dissertation includes a comprehensive literature review considering all the ways researchers have proposed to measure bicycle networks. For her study, Shi ultimately chose a method developed by Peter Furth of Northeastern University. Furth's model for measuring the connectivity of low-stress bicycle networks offers a classification of different types of street connections by their stress level, from 1 (suitable for children) to 4 (only 2-3% of cyclists willing to ride). In the final report, pages 25–31 and 47–53 illustrate the detailed bicycle network metrics Shi designed for the study.

Next, Shi used publicly available OpenStreetMap (OSM) data to measure the bicycle networks in two cities – Portland and Minneapolis. Why those cities? There was plentiful and relatively high quality bike count data available for both. The completeness of OSM data has been increasing each year, and future researchers can benefit from the successful demonstration of this methodology.

For both cities, Shi used bike count data to measure cycling activity, and open-source data plus additional supplementary data to measure three major types of bicycle infrastructure: on-street bike lanes, bike boulevards, and off-street paths. Using Furth's criteria she measured distance, stress along the route, and in general how easy it was to travel from one point to another along the bike network. Once she had evaluated a network for its connectivity and ease of use, she looked at the bike count data to see that network's impact on, and relationship to, bike ridership.

FINDINGS FROM PORTLAND AND MINNEAPOLIS

Both cities showed an improvement in level of traffic stress (LTS) between 2011 and 2017. In Portland, the major changes occurred in the far east Portland, northeast, and southern downtown areas of the city. These were the areas with significant infrastructure investments during the six years. These included the opening of the car-free Tilikum Crossing bridge, and bike boulevard construction in the southeast areas. The percentage of high-stress street segments decreased from 45% to 43%.

The City of Minneapolis also invested in new bicycle infrastructure during the past decade. The major changes happened in the downtown area. For example, protected bike lanes were constructed along two river-crossing roads: Central Avenue and 10th Avenue SE, around the University of Minnesota. In addition, bike lanes were installed across the city on arterials and major streets such as Central Avenue North and Lyndale Avenue North. The percentage of high-stress street segments decreased from 18.4% to 15.9% between 2011 and 2017.

The study found that the low stress bicycle network was associated with high bicycle ridership and high probability of choosing bikes among other travel modes, after controlling for other variables. In particular, the low-stress catchment area significantly affected bike counts in both case cities, indicating the importance of the extensiveness of the bicycle network in promoting bicycling activity. Increasing the reachable area via a low-stress-only network from a bike counter location by 1 square mile was associated with a 10% increase in bicycle volume in Portland, and a 14% increase in Minneapolis.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SOCIAL EQUITY AND BICYCLE NETWORKS

To determine if a well-connected bicycle network would especially benefit disadvantaged populations, Shi used one year of travel survey data in Portland from the Oregon Household Activity Survey (OHAS). She separated the data by gender, and found that the bicycle network influenced the female group more significantly. By increasing one unit of the low stress level metric along the travel route, the relative probability of choosing cycling than other modes was 26% higher for females. However, the same change in travel route didn't have significant impacts for males on choosing cycling compared to other modes. In other words, a connected network encourages women to bike more frequently.

In addition to gender, Shi also explored income level. She divided the population by income and found that the low-income population cares more about whether the bicycle network is holistic or not. In particular, increasing one unit of the low stress level metric along travel routes was associated with a 76% higher relative probability of choosing cycling compared to other modes for the low-income group, while the impacts on high-income counterparts were not significant. In other words, a better-connected network would make low-income travelers more likely to choose biking, while for high-income residents, this trend does not exist. It’s important to note that not having safe bike lanes to ride in leads to more frequent dangerous interactions between cyclists and motorists, and that has led to more confrontations with police. The holistic connectivity of that bike route takes on new significance when we consider barriers to biking. (Watch a recent PSU Friday Transportation Seminar: Biking While Black.)

IMPACTS ON FUTURE RESEARCH

In addition to demonstrating a successful methodology that future researchers can build upon, Shi's work also highlights the importance of accurate and open access data. 

"Having these data readily accessible for researchers and planners is essential. For cities that don't have these data, how can they even begin to measure the success of their investments in bikeway networks?" Shi said.

A lot of current research is focused on finding associations between ridership and network quality. In this dissertation, Shi was hoping to find some causal inference there: proof that the correlation between ridership and network quality is a cause-and-effect relationship. While this study did not prove that bike networks are the cause of increased ridership, she would like to see whether additional data, or another analytical approach, can further explore that point in the future.

IMPACTS ON PRACTICE AND POLICY

One of Shi's aims in conducting the study was to provide transportation professionals with concrete evidence that if they pay attention to connecting bicycle facilities, they can anticipate an increase in ridership. In particular, the improvements in bicycle networks would disproportionately benefit disadvantaged populations, such as female and low-income groups, by increasing their probability of riding bikes. If the goal is to achieve a certain mode share or certain active transportation goals, especially targeting disadvantaged population groups, this is some concrete evidence that connected networks can support that.

RELATED RESEARCH

To learn more about this and other Portland State University transportation research, sign up for our monthly research newsletter.

• Contextual Guidance at Intersections for Protected Bicycle Lanes
• Lessons from the Green Lanes: Evaluating Protected Bike Lanes in the U.S.
• Biking and Walking Quality Counts: Using “BikePed Portal” Counts to Develop Data Quality Checks

The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University is home to the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), and other transportation programs. TREC produces research and tools for transportation decision makers, develops K-12 curriculum to expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engages students and professionals through education.

A review of equity and vehicle sharing, by Jennifer Dill and Nathan McNeil of PSU, appears this month in a special issue of the Journal of Planning Literature (click here for access to a free author's edition). They investigated whether shared vehicle systems – carsharing, bikesharing, and e-scooter sharing – are equitable. Overall, they did not find much evidence that they are improving accessibility for disadvantaged populations. Equity programs in carsharing are notably understudied. Given that many cities lack safe bicycle infrastructure and trip distances can be long, there may be more immediate potential for improving accessibility through carsharing. The benefits of access to a vehicle for low income people are well documented.

Read Dr. Dill's blog here.

Photo by Cait McCusker

Comparing the Promise and Reality of E-Scooters: A Critical Assessment of Equity Improvements and Mode-Shift

Michael McQueen, Portland State University

Is shared micromobility the ideal first/last mile supplement to transit? Can electric scooters make it easier for historically disadvantaged populations to get around? In just three years, brand-new fleets of e-scooters have substantially disrupted and altered the urban mobility landscape. For proponents, it's tempting to view them as a new answer to old problems. A just-released study finds however, that while there is potential for improved mobility if they are paired with other interventions, the shiny rows of e-scooters parked around cities aren't a catchall solution for our longstanding issues.

Portland State University (PSU) graduate Michael McQueen surveyed nearly 2,000 PSU students in his masters thesis, "Comparing the Promise and Reality of E-Scooters: A Critical Assessment of Equity Improvements and Mode-Shift," to learn about their travel behaviors, preferences and barriers to using e-scooters. 

WHAT DOES A UNIVERSITY CAMPUS REVEAL ABOUT E-SCOOTER USAGE IN THE CITY?

PSU students offer an easily-accessible large population with the shared experience of frequently traveling to a specific urban location–the PSU campus in downtown Portland. The survey sample closely represented the university’s full student population by racial makeup. The sample was more racially diverse than the Portland metro area and it captured twice as many female respondents as male respondents, which resulted in models that contained smaller margins of error for racial minority and female coefficients. This is critical to understanding the equity impacts. Given the university setting, it was largely skewed towards younger and lower-income respondents. The upside is that this demographic is typically considered more progressive in their transportation choices, which renders McQueen’s findings about their use and perceptions of non-car modes as conservative when compared to the Portland metro area as a whole. 

Students were asked how they currently use and perceive e-scooters, and which mode they would choose (between a car, bike, or e-scooter + light rail combination) to get to PSU in a stated choice experiment. Respondents chose their preferred mode in several hypothetical scenarios where the travel times and costs varied. McQueen then developed a model from the experiment which controlled for travel time, cost, sociodemographics, health, travel behavior, and latent attitudes towards the travel modes. 

PRIMARY FINDINGS: WHAT INFLUENCES MODE CHOICE?

The statistical model revealed that e-scooters in combination with MAX light rail were not regarded as the most preferred mode for getting to campus anywhere in the metro region, given current pricing and travel times. McQueen concluded that cities should not depend on e-scooters as a de facto first-mile/last-mile solution without targeted management interventions. 

So which factors influenced mode choice for traveling to PSU? Some findings that stood out:

• Car "friction" (increased drive time and parking cost) positively influenced choosing e-scooter + MAX (Portland's light rail transit system).

• E-scooter and MAX "friction" (increased walk time to e-scooter, e-scooter ride time, e-scooter cost, and MAX ride time) negatively influenced choosing e-scooter + MAX.

• Black respondents were 45% less likely to choose e-scooter + MAX compared to white respondents.

• Female respondents were 27% less likely to choose e-scooter + MAX compared to male respondents.

• More entrenched drivers were less likely to choose e-scooter + MAX (both those who took more car trips and those who felt more positively about cars).

• Those who already perceived bikes, e-scooters and MAX more positively were more likely to choose e-scooter + MAX.

McQueen applied the model spatially to Portland, to understand catchment areas where the average respondent would prefer which mode given realistic travel times and prices. The below maps illustrate the catchment areas. In these maps, the color indicates the most likely mode choice at that location, and the intensity of the color indicates the probability that it would be chosen among the three modes. 

Test: Current Conditions

Currently, there is no place in the metro area where using e-scooter + MAX is the most preferable mode choice, on average (note there is no yellow): 

Test: Free E-Scooters

Making e-scooters free does not make e-scooters + MAX preferable anywhere new (note there is still no yellow): 

Test: Several Targeted Management Interventions

Combining several interventions (in this example: increased parking cost, free e-scooter rides, and PR for MAX and e-scooters) could have the desired effect of encouraging more students to choose e-scooter + light rail transit to get to campus. Note this approach results in e-scooter + MAX being the preferred choice in a large area (lots of yellow):

BARRIERS TO RIDING E-SCOOTERS

At the time of the survey (the week of Mar 2, 2020), only 6% of the nearly 2,000 respondents had taken at least one e-scooter ride in the previous 7 days. They were asked about barriers that prevented them from riding e-scooters more frequently: 

• 52% have never tried riding an e-scooter before 

• 49% don't feel comfortable riding in traffic 

• 45% don't want to ride when the weather is bad 

• 39% can't count on an e-scooter being around when they need it 

• 35% can't afford to ride an e-scooter regularly 

• 21% not enough dedicated lanes

A significantly larger portion of women than men cited e-scooter inexperience, discomfort riding in traffic, and bad weather as barriers. The model did not reveal any significant difference among race/ethnicities for citing these barriers. 

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The results of this research can offer the following general guidance for practitioners: 

• Transportation professionals should not depend on e-scooters to be used as a first-mile/last-mile solution without targeted management interventions. 

• One possible solution is to limit e-scooter service exclusively to the suburbs, as these are the first areas where e-scooter + MAX begins to become the most preferable mode once parking cost increases. 

• We need to rethink how we encourage equity in transportation, as e-scooters do not inherently bring about greater racial or gender equity. 

• Consider that policies that help make e-scooters + MAX more preferable also encourage more bike use (increased parking cost, for example).

MORE ABOUT THE RESEARCHER 

Michael McQueen graduated from PSU in summer 2020 with a masters of civil and environmental engineering degree. During the course of his masters program he has been selected as a YPT Streetlight Fellow, a two-time Eisenhower Fellow, and a National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) Scholar. He has served as a graduate research assistant on several TREC research projects, including a set of white papers about e-bike potential, an exploration of e-bike travel behavior, a project on "Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) Methodology of Benchmarking Transportation System Performance" for the City of Portland, and a study on trip generation at multifamily housing. 

Mike was instrumental in the development of an innovative electric vehicle cost and impact tool, launched in June 2020. He was lead author on the October 2020 paper "The E-Bike Potential: Estimating regional e-bike impacts on greenhouse gas emissions," published in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. He also contributed to "Transportation Transformation: Is Micromobility Making a Macro Impact on Sustainability?", a literature review led by PSU's Kelly Clifton that has just been accepted to the Journal of Planning Literature. To hear directly from Mike about his research on how e-bike incentives could expand the market, watch a video interview with him, recorded during the 2019 Transportation & Communities Summit.

RELATED RESEARCH

To learn more about this and other TREC research, sign up for our monthly research newsletter.

• Friday Transportation Seminar (PBOT Edition): The Portland E-Scooter Experience

• The E-Bike Potential: How E-Bikes Can Improve Sustainable Transportation

• Can Incentivizing E-bikes Support GHG Goals? Launching the New EV Incentive Cost and Impact Tool

The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University is home to the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), and other transportation programs. TREC produces research and tools for transportation decision makers, develops K-12 curriculum to expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engages students and professionals through education.

We're proud to announce that our associate director, Hau Hagedorn, has been named the new Chair of Oregon's governor-appointed Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

OBPAC serves as a liaison between the public and the Oregon Department of Transportation. The eight-member committee advises ODOT in the regulation of bicycle and pedestrian traffic, the establishment of bikeways and walkways, and other statewide bicycle and pedestrian issues.

The committee meets six times a year in various locations around the state to support implementation of the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan and listen to the views and concerns of interested citizens, local officials and ODOT staff.

The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University is home to the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), and other transportation programs. TREC produces research and tools for transportation decision makers, develops K-12 curriculum to expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engages students and professionals through education.

Photo by Cait McCusker

In our previous posts about Portland, Oregon bike travel and the pandemic from April and May, we observed bridge crossing stagnation and decline across the Hawthorne and Tilikum Crossing bridges during normal commute hours. To expand on these findings, we took a look at how Portland’s bike share system – BIKETOWN – has been impacted by the global pandemic.

Claims of a worldwide boom in bike share usage were reported during the early days of COVID-related closures. However, a few months have gone by and it’s now apparent that these findings were misleading due to limited sample selection. For example, some of the reported US bike share ridership outlooks were based on data collected over a very short period, just a week and a half in early March for Chicago and NYC. In the same article, Seattle and San Francisco were actually shown to have experienced a decrease in bike share ridership. In contrast, the Federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), using data from March, April, and May, has actually found between a 7% and 60% overall decrease in bike share ridership across several US cities compared to 2019 levels. But what about Portland?

Unfortunately, Portland’s bike share system has not fared much differently from the rest of the country, when compared to the BTS report. Controlling for seasonal ridership trends, we fit a regression curve (R2 = 0.63, which means it accounts for 63% of the variation in the data) to all of BIKETOWN’s pre-COVID trip data, and compared it with the post-COVID closure data we have through the end of August, 2020 (Fig. 1). (Data anomaly: The spike in trips observed mid-2018 were a result of all rides being free during the May Bike to Work Challenge.)

Fig 1.: Daily observed trips since the start of BIKETOWN. Blue curve: seasonally adjusted predicted daily trips. Solid orange: schools closed (Mar 12, 2020). Dashed orange: stay-at-home order issued (Mar 23, 2020)

Looking closer at 2020 (Fig 2.):

Fig 2.: Daily observed trips, 2020 only. Blue curve: seasonally adjusted predicted daily trips. Solid orange: schools closed (Mar 12, 2020). Dashed orange: stay-at-home order issued (Mar 23, 2020)

We found that so far during the pandemic, on average, BIKETOWN ridership is down 72.7% (standard deviation 8.7%) compared to the expected ridership for that day of the year according to our model.

We were also curious to understand how this manifests spatially using rough trip origin and destination coordinates provided by BIKETOWN. We followed a similar method to An et al. (2019) for building the flow maps presented below. These maps show Portland split into census tracts, areas defined by the Census Bureau that contain similar numbers of residents. We arrange the maps to show average trip origins and destinations between and within census tracts, for three-hour intervals for dates before and after the implementation of COVID restrictions. The total average trips per day during the time period is also displayed on each map. First, looking at weekdays (Fig 3 & 4):

Fig 3. Flow maps depicting trip origins and destinations between and within census tracts for the average weekday morning, pre- and post-COVID closures.

Fig 4. Flow maps depicting trip origins and destinations between and within census tracts for the average weekday afternoon, pre- and post-COVID closures.

We notice an unmistakable drop in total trips at all hours of the day - in particular, we see a reduction in trips to and from downtown and between other census tracts during normal commute and happy hours. There is a lesser drop in trips remaining within the downtown census tracts, except during the noon to 3 PM period. Yet, the number of trips that remain within census tracts outside of downtown is similar to pre-COVID times. This tells us that riders are maintaining a similar number of trips to local destinations while reducing the number of longer-distance inter-census tract trips.

Next, let’s look at weekends (Fig 5 & 6):

Fig 5. Flow maps depicting trip origins and destinations between and within census tracts for the average weekend day morning, pre- and post-COVID closures.

Fig 6. Flow maps depicting trip origins and destinations between and within census tracts for the average weekend day evening, pre- and post-COVID closures.

Similar to weekday trips, weekend trips are also down at all hours of the day. This manifests most prominently in inter-census tract and downtown trips. Again, intra-census tract trip levels remain similar to pre-COVID times, except early in the morning and late in the evening.

Interestingly, there appear to be more trips occuring in a few new north and east census tracts compared to pre-COVID times, but this could be showing up due to added system area coverage since the initial launch of BIKETOWN. (Read more about BIKETOWN’s system area expansions in their blog posts from June 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018.) Since these areas were not originally part of the system for several years, the census tracts around the edges of the current system area have artificially lower pre-COVID average trips.

To better contextualize these results, we hope to compare Portland’s bike share trends with those in other cities soon. Additionally, it will be interesting to track how BIKETOWN ridership behavior changes as the new electrified fleet rolls out this month. Stay tuned!

LEARN MORE about Portland State University research on bike share and e-bikes.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Michael McQueen

Graduate Research Assistant

Mike McQueen is a second year master's student working with John MacArthur of TREC and Kelly Clifton of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Currently Mike is researching e-bike travel behavior and micromobility as an Eisenhower Fellow. In the past he has studied e-bike purchase incentive programs, potential positive environmental impact of e-bikes in Portland, BIKETOWN, and the demographics of zero car households.

 
Tammy Lee, Ph.D.

Transportation Data Program Administrator

Tammy is working on a variety of projects for TREC, including documentation, data synthesis, analysis, and visualization supporting ongoing work with PORTAL and Bike-Ped Portal. Prior to joining TREC, she worked as a data scientist for a political digital media consulting firm.

The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University is home to the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), and other transportation programs. TREC produces research and tools for transportation decision makers, develops K-12 curriculum to expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engages students and professionals through education. For resources and tools for remote teaching during the quarantine period, check out our TREC and COVID-19 resource page.

On March 23, 2020, Oregon — like many other U.S. states — was placed under a stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At Portland State, we were faced with a decision: What to do about our 2020 transportation summer camps for Oregon high schoolers? 

Our camps, up to this year, have been defined by the in-person, on-campus experience. Previous cohorts toured Portland's bikeways, saw the inside of Multnomah County's bridges, and sat down with professional engineers and planners to talk about tricky traffic problems. Would the program survive the transition to a virtual format?

We had already received 52 applications from promising Oregon high schoolers, and decided the camp was too important to cancel. With the financial support of the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, we were able to shift to a virtual camp and still fulfill our objectives:

• Introduce high school students to professionals in transportation 

• Teach them about the broad range of transportation careers and sectors 

• Present the social justice and equity issues within transportation and how they relate to students, their families and their neighborhoods 

• Introduce students to transportation systems in Portland 

• Connect them with other high school students who are passionate about careers in STEM 

• Have fun!

Of the 52 original applicants for the residential camp, 27 students signed up for the virtual experience. There were 12 campers in the girls' camp and 15 in the all-genders camp.

When surveyed after the camps, all the respondents indicated a fairly high level of interest (at least 3 or higher, on a 1-5 scale) in pursuing a career in transportation.

GOING VIRTUAL WITH TRANSPORTATION

Our transportation education program coordinator, Nora Stoelting, events administrator Theresa Somrak, and Associate Director Hau Hagedorn had just a few weeks to work with instructors and shift to an online curriculum. With four years of transportation camps under our belt, we had plenty of material to draw from. Our staff dove in with genuine enthusiasm and creative solutions. 

We switched up the camps to partial days over four weeks. In between online sessions there were weekly field exercises where students (masked for safety, and wearing reflective vests we provided) had to go out and collect data in their own neighborhoods. Despite the uncertainty going into it, the 2020 virtual camps turned out better than we could have imagined. Here are a few quotes from the students:

 "I was sad when I learned that it would be online, and I would have loved meeting everybody in real life. But it was actually so much fun, and it was formatted in a way where there was enough time to complete the projects at home and also stay engaged for those four weeks."

"After learning from the presenters, it made me begin to consider a job as a traffic engineer or as a planner of school routes. Transportation is a very special field because it has a big impact on people's daily lives and I feel that people sometimes take that for granted." 

"All of the speakers were amazing and I learned new things from each one. I really loved the speaker who talked about tactical urbanism because it was inspiring and felt like something that I could realistically do."

CREATING AN INTENTIONAL SPACE FOR CONNECTION: PEER MENTORS

Seeking to enhance the virtual experience, we hired peer mentors from Oregon colleges and universities: young adults who could give direction and guidance to the camp attendees. We found five outstanding mentors who worked with students (here are some of their blogs from the first camp) and really made the difference in terms of facilitating small group discussions: Aujai Webster, Desly Amurao, Dayana Camaal Perez, Noah Kulala, and Noah Kurzenhauser. 

"Transportation is an inherently multi-dimensional and protean field; it seems that new ideas are constantly arising, and individuals are beginning to draw connections to other societal factors (most prominently race and socioeconomic status).  Serving as a peer mentor in TREC's 2020 virtual summer camp afforded me the opportunity to assist in disseminating this information and sundry learning opportunities to the bright and enthusiastic youth that participated.  It was reassuring and calming, especially in today's volatile climate, to see that the upcoming generation is in good hands." - Noah Kurzenhauser, 2020 Peer Mentor

 "My relationship with my mentor was great. It was very nice having her check in on me each week and remind me of what was going on weekly. Having a mentor added positively to my overall camp experience." - 2020 Camp Participant

CENTERING RACIAL EQUITY IN THE CURRICULUM

The intersection of transportation and social equity has always been a major focus of our summer camps. Social equity is a broad umbrella term, but this year, in the midst of global protests against police brutality after the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other unarmed black people by law enforcement officers, we zeroed in on how transportation intersects with racial equity. 

To this end, we reframed our curriculum to broaden students' understanding of racial equity as a core aspect of planning and engineering. In the history of the transportation field, harm has been caused through gentrification and neighborhood displacement, over-policing of BIPOC communities, a lack of mobility options for many transit-dependent populations, and a fear of harassment on the streets and on public transit. We stressed how the future of the profession must put equity front and center in order to mitigate harmful impacts of past policies, and prevent future harms.

TRANSPORTATION PROFESSIONALS FROM THE PORTLAND METRO AREA

We also want to share our gratitude for the community of transportation professionals without whose support and involvement the camps could not have been held. Twenty-four professionals from public and private agencies joined us for a "speed networking" event with the students, fielding career questions and learning about students' interests. Seven instructors gave guest lectures or led workshops: Gwen Shaw of Toole Design; Zoie Wesenberg of the office of Congressman Earl Blumenauer; Peter Koonce, Xao Xiong, and Lale Santelices of the Portland Bureau of Transportation; Grace Stainback of Alta Planning; and Inessa Vitko of C-TRAN.

These instructors introduced students to tactical urbanism, elements of street design, features that enhance accessibility, and how transportation budget decisions are made. Inessa Vitko of C-TRAN led a transit equity exercise: students worked through a hypothetical budgeting problem in which they needed to cut spending for a transit service while minimizing impacts on minority groups, low-income individuals, mixed-ability riders, and other protected classes of transit riders. Another guest instructor, Xao Xiong, had this to say:

"Going into it, I was worried it would feel like I was talking to an empty, invisible crowd. But that did not reflect my experience at all. I really appreciated how grounded, engaging, and supportive this learning space was - despite the virtual format. Race and intersectionality is a really uncomfortable topic for anyone, but the TREC staff and camp peer mentors enabled these students to engage in honest and meaningful discussion. The kudo boards afterwards were so special to me, and through that direct feedback and hearing from Nora afterwards - it felt impactful as an instructor and transportation professional to know that these students kept coming back to the topics of inequities in transportation for Black and brown people. The students really grasped the idea of looking at who is burdened by and who benefits from changes to transportation infrastructure and programs. Teaching this camp was a highlight of my summer." - Xao Xiong, Portland Bureau of Transportation, 2020 Guest Instructor

LOOKING FORWARD TO SUMMER 2021

As 2020 has shown us, we can never be certain about what the future will bring, but we're hoping we'll be able to return to our traditional, in-person residential camps next year. If you're interested in being notified when 2021 applications open up, sign up here and we will email you as soon as dates are set.

These camps were hosted by the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University, and funded by the United States Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration.

The Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University is home to the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), and other transportation programs. TREC produces research and tools for transportation decision makers, develops K-12 curriculum to expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engages students and professionals through education.