Portland State University graduate Mike McQueen, who earned his masters in civil engineering in 2020 and now works at ICF as a transportation data specialist and engineer, has published an article in the November 2022 issue of Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice.

The article, "Assessing the perception of E-scooters as a practical and equitable first-mile/last-mile solution," is a revised version of McQueen's masters thesis, "Comparing the Promise and Reality of E-Scooters: a Critical Assessment of Equity Improvements and Mode-Shift," which is available for download on PDX Scholar. The article updates the statistical model used to a mixed multinomial (MMNL) regression model, which allows for better control of random variations in taste among respondents, and makes findings about the influence of travel time and cost on mode choice more robust. McQueen presented this research during a poster session at the TRB Conference on Advancing Transportation Equity (CATE) conference in September 2021.

"This research shows that e-scooter systems in their current form are not organically leading to substantial mode shift from automobile travel at a regional scale, nor are they leading to increased gender or racial transportation equity," McQueen said.

E-scooters have disrupted and altered the urban mobility landscape. During their introductory period, they have been commonly touted as part of a larger micromobility solution that erases equity barriers and solves the first-mile/last-mile problem. However, few studies in the nascent e-scooter literature have considered these claims. In this study, McQueen designed and administered a stated choice experiment to 1,968 students at Portland State University. Results indicated that e-scooters were lackluster in bringing racial and gender equity in transportation. A few highlights from the findings:

• There was no place in the study area where combining an e-scooter and light rail to travel to the downtown university campus was more utilitarian than biking or private car at current travel times and prices.
• Black students were 15% less likely than white students to choose e-scooter and light rail instead of car in the stated choice experiment.
• Female students were 59% less likely than male students to choose e-scooter and light rail instead of car in the stated choice experiment.
• Transit travel time was the strongest direct elasticity to changing the e-scooter and light rail choice probability.
• Parking cost was the strongest car mode cross elasticity to changing the e-scooter and light rail choice probability.

"It is important to not leave our transit system behind when incorporating micromobility into a region – in fact, the variable with the largest impact on e-scooter + light rail mode choice preference was the travel time for the light rail portion of the trip. Decreasing travel time led to a significant increase in preference," McQueen said.

He suggests that E-scooter services that incentivize a more targeted use case for replacing automobile travel, such as connecting a suburban area to a light rail station, could be more influential in reducing urban automobile travel to downtown, especially if travel times and prices are competitive. One way to achieve this use case could be price incentives or discounts to encourage this multimodal behavior in specific areas near stations.

During his time at PSU, McQueen worked with TREC Sustainable Transportation Program Manager John MacArthur on a number of micromobility and e-bike studies, including the development of an electric vehicle cost and impact tool and the expansion of e-bike incentive programs. He received various scholarships and awards including two Eisenhower Fellowships, and his work on bike share and first mile/last mile travel behavior led to a YPT national Streetlight graduate fellowship. Now at ICF, Mike is working to make cities more equitable, sustainable and multimodal through data-driven policy and design.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.

We are proud to acknowledge Portland State University engineering masters student Cameron Bennett, who has been awarded a Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship for the second year in a row. Bennett, who won his first Eisenhower Fellowship last year, will receive another presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation at this year's annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). He is also being honored as the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) Masters Student of the Year.

Connect with Cameron on LinkedIn.

During his master's program, Cameron has served two terms as President of the Institute of Transportation Engineers student chapter at Portland State, ITE-STEP (Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning). In 2022, the student group won the ITE Student Chapter Momentum Award. He has also received a National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) scholarship and a 2021 Walter H. Kramer Fellowship.

"I am very grateful to the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program for providing a second year of support while I work towards a Masters degree. The funding has made it possible for my fiancée and myself to live in Portland as full time students, and has provided flexibility on graduate research assistantship project work through tuition support," Cameron said.

In the coming year, Cameron will be working with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) on evaluating newly-installed Advisory Bike Lanes (ABLs). He will be helping with data evaluation as the Bureau assesses the treatment as part of the FHWA Request to Experiment process, and determines whether ABLs should become part of Portland's standard toolkit for urban bikeway development.

Cameron's primary research focus is on facilitating the use of active transportation, and promoting mode shift away from single-occupancy vehicles. Working with TREC's Sustainable Transportation Program Manager, John MacArthur, he helped to develop an online tool to track e-bike incentive programs in North America. He presented a poster on this work at last year's TRB annual meeting: How E-Bike Incentive Programs Are Used to Expand the Market (PDF). 

At this year's TRB annual meeting, Cameron will be presenting a poster on e-bike incentive programs in Poster Session 3096, Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program Poster (Session 2), on Tuesday, January 10. His presentation will include an update of the policy scan, an overview of the white paper content, and a short preview of the findings from a recent stated preference survey aimed at identifying the "tipping point" where an incentive successfully induces someone to buy an ebike. 

The Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program advances the transportation workforce by helping to attract the nation's brightest minds to the field of transportation, encouraging future transportation professionals to seek advanced degrees, and helping to retain top talent in the U.S. transportation industry.

See other past PSU recipients of various transportation scholarships on our scholars page.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.

New mobility technologies, such as shared mobility services and autonomous vehicles (AVs), continue to evolve. How do travelers decide whether to adopt new transportation modes or continue to use conventional modes? "Transportation Mode Choice Behavior in the Era of Autonomous Vehicles: The Application of Discrete Choice Modeling and Machine Learning" is a 2022 dissertation by Sangwan Lee of Portland State University which uses machine learning to examine this question.

Lee, who earned his PhD from the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning in 2022 working with faculty advisor Liming Wang, is now a research associate working in employment research at LX Spatial Information Research Institute, Korea Land and Geospatial Informatix Corporation in Jeonju, South Korea. He is currently working on several research topics, including autonomous logistics.

"I'm excited about the next chapter of my work in employment research because I am joining research projects about autonomous vehicles," Lee said.

Lee's dissertation consists of three papers. The first examines future market shares of each available mode of transportation in the era of AVs, factors influencing mode choice behaviors, and their marginal effects using a mixed logit model (MXL). The second uses interpretable machine learning (ML) to investigate the optimal algorithm (i.e., stochastic gradient boosting decision tree model) in greater depth, including feature importance and non-linear marginal effects. Focusing on methodology, the final paper assesses the limitations of ML when applied to transportation mode choice modeling and suggests future research directions for methodological improvements by comparing ML to discrete choice modeling (DCM).

This research contributes to three major elements of the current understanding of transportation mode choice behavior in the era of AVs and choice modeling as follows:

• First, consumers in the AV era could choose from a variety of transportation modes likely to coexist, including private AVs, shared mobility services, and conventional transportation modes. This dissertation thus makes a significant contribution by examining more comprehensive transportation mode choice behaviors and expanding demand-side discussions.
• Second, since current transportation planning efforts have relied on estimates and expectations, this dissertation contributes to the decision-making process by offering crucial underlying knowledge not currently available.
• Third, this dissertation assesses the limitations of ML for transportation mode choice modeling and suggests potential future avenues for methodological improvement.

Learn more about Sangwan Lee's background and works by visiting his ORCID profile.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.

The 102nd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) will be held January 8–12, 2023 in Washington, D.C., and ten of Portland State University's core transportation faculty and researchers will be sharing their expertise at the largest transportation conference in the world. The TRB annual meeting attracts thousands of transportation professionals from around the globe to address transportation policy, practice, and plans for the future.

The spotlight theme for the 2023 meeting is Rejuvenation Out of Disruption: Envisioning a Transportation System for a Dynamic Future.

VIEW THE ONLINE GUIDE TO PSU AT TRB 2023

A Few Session Highlights to Watch For:

Monday, Jan 9, 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM, Analyzing the Impacts of Intersection Treatments and Traffic Characteristics on Bicyclist Safety: Development of Data-Driven Guidance on the Application of Bike Boxes, Mixing Zones, and Bicycle Signals – Senior Research Associate Sirisha Kothuri of PSU's Maseeh College of Engineering will present in a lectern session alongside Brendan Russo of Northern Arizona University, Edward Smaglik of Northern Arizona University, and David Hurwitz of Oregon State University.

Kothuri’s primary research interests are in the areas of multimodal traffic operations, bicycle and pedestrian counting, and safety. See more transportation research projects she has worked on at PSU.

Monday, Jan 9, 3:45 PM - 5:30 PM, Driver and Bicyclist Comprehension of Blue Light Detection Confirmation Systems – PSU's Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and civil engineering professor Chris Monsere will present with Sirisha Kothuri in a poster session alongside Douglas Cobb of Burgess & Niple and David Hurwitz and Hisham Jashami of Oregon State University.

Monsere's primary research interests are in design and operation of multimodal transportation facilities including user behavior, comprehension, preferences, and the overall safety effectiveness of transportation improvements. See related research projects.

Tuesday, 10:15 AM - 12:00 PM, Evaluation of Red Colored Pavement Markings for Transit Lanes – Urban Studies & Planning Professor Jennifer Dill, director of TREC and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), will present in a lectern session along with Chris Monsere and TREC Research Associate Nathan McNeil, who conducts research on impacts of active transportation and transit equity.

PSU researchers are working with the City of Portland and TriMet to improve mobility and transit access under the Enhanced Transit Corridors Plan and Rose Lanes Project. Learn more by watching a May 2022 presentation on this project.

Wednesday, 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM, ​Explore Regional Variation in the Effects of Built Environment on Driving With High Resolution U.S. Nation-Wide Data – Liming Wang, associate professor in the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, will present in a lectern session on reproducible research in traffic flow theory.

Wang's research takes a data-driven approach to address challenging issues in planning, in particular those intersecting land use and transportation. See more of his transportation research projects.

Wednesday, 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM, Evaluating the Potential of Crowdsourced Data to Estimate Network-Wide Bicycle Volumes – Sirisha Kothuri and Nathan McNeil will present in a lectern session with TREC research associate Joe Broach, who is an instructor in the School of Urban Studies and Planning and a Senior Researcher and Modeler at Metro (MPO), along with Md Mintu Miah, University of California, Berkeley; Kate Hyun and Stephen Mattingly, University of Texas, Arlington; Krista Nordback, UNC Highway Safety Research Center; and Frank Proulx, Frank Proulx Consulting.

Supported by a pooled fund grant administered by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), Sirisha Kothuri led this research project aimed at fusing traditional and emerging data sources together, to derive bicycle volumes for an entire transportation network. Read more about the project or watch the video overview: Data Fusion Techniques to Estimate Network-Wide Bicycle Volumes.

2023 Eisenhower Fellow

[[{"fid":"6160","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"default"}},"attributes":{"height":"214","width":"180","style":"float: left; margin-right: 15px;","class":"media-element file-default","data-delta":"1"}}]]We are proud to acknowledge Portland State University engineering masters student Cameron Bennett, who has been awarded a Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship for the second year. Bennett, who won his first Eisenhower Fellowship last year, will receive another presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation at this year's annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). Read more about Cameron.

Cameron's primary research focus is on facilitating the use of active transportation, and promoting mode shift away from single-occupancy vehicles. Working with TREC's Sustainable Transportation Program Manager, John MacArthur, he helped to develop an online tool to track e-bike incentive programs in North America. He presented a poster on this work at last year's TRB annual meeting: How E-Bike Incentive Programs Are Used to Expand the Market (PDF). This year, Cameron will be presenting a poster on e-bike incentive programs in Poster Session 3096, Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program Poster (Session 2), on Tuesday, January 10.

NITC Reception at TRB 2023

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) invites partners and members of our research consortium of six NITC universities (Portland State University, University of Oregon, Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Utah, University of Arizona and University of Texas at Arlington) to a reception at the Crown & Crow on Tuesday, January 10 for a night of networking, fun, and transportation bingo. RSVP to the NITC reception!

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is proud to introduce our newest Dissertation Fellow, Nicholas Puczkowskyj of Portland State University, who was awarded $15,000 for his doctoral research project: Expanding Transmobilities: An Art-Informed Methodology For Genderdiverse Travel Behavior.

"My dissertation focuses on understanding how genderdiverse individuals' gender identity influences their travel behavior and travel decisions. I use an art-based methodology by operationalizing collage and mental maps to delicately capture these data. I believe this work will support mobility justice research and the greater social justice movement by further solidifying the field of transmobilities. Additionally, this research seeks to push the boundaries of transportation research by illustrating the power of art as a modality for travel behavior research," Puczkowskyj said.

There is a significant gendered travel behavior research gap in the transportation literature. A plethora of transportation literature identifying and contrasting cisgender disparities exists, but more inclusive approaches to genderdiverse identities remain scarce. The burgeoning field of transmobilities investigates transgender mobility and evolved from the nexus of mobility justice and gender studies by studying transgender experiences on public transit.

Nick's dissertation expands transmobilities to include all modes of transportation and experiences involving genderdiverse identities. Using subjective wellbeing as a unit of measure, an art-informed methodology gathers firsthand experiences and narratives of genderdiverse participants in an effort to understand how their gender expression influences their travel behavior decisions. During an interview, 25 participants use collage materials to create art and mental maps reflecting on their experiences making trips through Portland, Oregon. This research hypothesizes gender identity and gender presentation significantly influences a genderdiverse person’s subjective wellbeing and travel decisions.

Nick Puczkowskyj is a graduate research and teaching assistant at Portland State University's College of Urban and Public Affairs. He has also worked as a teaching assistant and research assistant at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Nick's research specializes in transportation equity, focusing on mobility justice, transgender mobility, queer mobility, gender disparities, and marginalized communities. He earned his master's degree in community and regional planning from the University of New Orleans. Learn more about Nick in a July 2022 Student Spotlight article, or learn more about NITC dissertation fellowships.

Header Photo by Lacey Friedly

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is one of seven U.S. Department of Transportation national university transportation centers. NITC is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. This PSU-led research partnership also includes the Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah. We pursue our theme — improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities — through research, education and technology transfer.

This article is about the 2022 impacts of our IBPI Comprehensive Bikeway Design workshop. See other IBPI trainings, including the faculty workshop "Integrating Bike-Ped Topics Into University Transportation Courses," at our bike/ped training home page.

If you're biking through Cincinnati, Ohio in the next couple of years and find yourself pedaling on a Portland-style neighborhood greenway or two-way protected bike lane, it might be because two engineers from the City of Cincinnati's Department of Transportation & Engineering—Joe Conway and Brian Goubeaux—attended our Comprehensive Bikeway Design Workshop in the summer of 2022 and brought some inspiration home.

The City of Cincinnati is in the process of updating its Bicycle Transportation Plan, adopted in 2010 and due for a refresh. Goubeaux, a senior engineer for the City, said that design strategies and practices he learned during the summer workshop will likely find their way into the plan.

"We've been looking at implementing a neighborhood greenway. We've always had neighborhood greenways as a tool in the toolbox; it's always been listed on paper, but nothing has ever fully been implemented. So now as we're updating our bike plan, over the next six months or so, we're looking to include that as a priority for implementation in future years," Goubeaux said. 

Fellow Cincinnati engineer Joe Conway agrees. "The bike infrastructure solutions we explored during the workshop will certainly be seriously considered as investments to the infrastructure in our city going forward," Conway said. Other ideas that may be a good fit for Cincinnati's bike plan and upcoming infrastructure projects include bicycle signal detection feedback and strategies for converting a one-way bike lane to a two-way bike facility on the same side of a street. 

Offered through the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) since 2009, the Comprehensive Bikeway Design workshop has taught nearly 300 professionals from 30 U.S. states. Ohio isn't the first state (and won't be the last) to import bikeway design ideas. Another 2022 attendee, transportation engineer Akmal Durrani of the Washington State Department of Transportation, also expects to put some of the designs covered in the course to use.

"We are completing a street design project now, with some modifications to our roadway design to include a path for bike users. Definitely in the near future we will be implementing some things from the workshop," Durrani said.

Senior Transportation Planner Emily Benoit hopes to put some of the design principles she learned this summer into practice for the City of Vancouver, Washington.

"The most valuable thing I learned is that it’s really possible to build great multimodal roads even in the extremely suburban context. The suburban environment is going to be seeing drastic changes in the near future, so some of the things I’ll be looking to address in my own work are around slower shared roads, education on commuting by bike, and collaborative design processes to make the 'safest' design choices for bike users," Benoit said.

Goubeaux, who came away from the workshop "energized and excited," believes that the on-the-ground learning method is key to successful bikeway training.

"This format of doing part in the classroom,  part in the field – where you get to feel and see and ride and experience what you are talking about – I think that is indispensable. You can learn about roadway sections and traffic counts and all that stuff on a presentation or a video, but without actually seeing and experiencing it, I think it's that missing link to actually getting it. I think that experiential piece is absolutely necessary."

Several agencies have sent multiple representatives over the years, to try their wheels in Portland and learn from our instructors. Kendra Nelson of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission,who attended this year, found out about the workshop from colleagues who had attended in previous years.

Nelson, who is currently working on a bicycle and pedestrian plan as well as a signal retiming effort, said that the IBPI workshop "was the perfect segue into the work that we do in our team." She expects to use insights provided by IBPI instructor Peter Koonce, who manages the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation's Signals, Street Lighting, & ITS Division, to advocate for restructuring signal timing around the bike rather than thinking strictly in terms of level-of-service (LOS).

"I think that anybody who's doing any kind of transportation planning, whether you're a bicycle planner, a pedestrian or transit planner, or just doing a lot of planning for single occupancy vehicles: You should be taking this course. I think that it's a necessary perspective shift, and given the state of climate change and inequality, it's just something that we should be looking at more to provide a range of diverse options for folks," Nelson said.

IBPI is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. The week-long IBPI workshop draws professionals from all over the globe. Check out our album of photos from the 2022 workshop here. A second IBPI workshop, Integrating Bike-Ped Topics into University Transportation Courses, is aimed at helping university faculty make their transportation curriculum more inclusive of active transportation modes.

Both workshops are taught by experts from local agencies and Portland State University, a national leader in active transportation. Research by PSU transportation faculty has informed NACTO’s Urban Bikeway Design Guide, FHWA’s Bikeway Selection Guide, the FTA’s Manual on Bicycle and Pedestrian Connections to Transit, the FHWA’s Strategic Agenda for Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation and many other design guidebooks.

If you'd like to be notified when workshop registration opens for 2023, add your email address here and we'll email you as soon as dates are confirmed.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.

Navigating an unfamiliar place is uniquely challenging for people with disabilities. People with blindness, deafblindness, visual impairment or low vision, as well as those who use wheelchairs, can travel more independently in urban areas with the aid of effective wayfinding technology. A new report from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) explores how to leverage low-cost methods to enable people to more easily move through public, urban indoor and outdoor spaces.

The study, led by Martin Swobodzinski and Amy Parker of Portland State University, used focus groups, two case studies, and an in-person structured wayfinding experience on the PSU campus to find the most helpful ways of getting around. Tactile maps were found to be a very useful resource, with an accessible mobile app also showing promise as an orientation and mobility aid.

The researcher will share more details about this project in a free webinar on December 15: Individual Wayfinding in the Context of Visual Impairment, Blindness, and Deafblindness.

WHY IS THIS RESEARCH IMPORTANT?

Environments and wayfinding tools that support safe, confident mobility have been linked with improved employment outcomes, more access to higher education, and better quality of life. The results from this study improve our understanding of how people with visual impairment and blindness find their way through the world. Researchers are hopeful that the insights from the study will support the development of standards and innovation in mobile wayfinding as it relates to the integration of indoor and outdoor wayfinding, and routing for visually impaired, blind, and deafblind pedestrian travelers.

Despite the proliferation of wayfinding apps that are meant to benefit travelers, the effectiveness of such tools remains limited. This study gave voice to the experience of diverse travelers who use wayfinding technologies to accomplish important life tasks. In addition to the findings discussed below, researchers hope the analysis of the remaining data will drive forward a better understanding of the information needs of visually impaired, blind, and deafblind pedestrian travelers.

RESEARCH METHODS

The project sought answers to three questions:

• What are the preference structures, information needs, and expectations of individuals with visual-impairment, blindness, and deafblindness towards wayfinding in public indoor/outdoor spaces?
• How can low-cost wayfinding technology (e.g., digital maps, spatial data, personal telecommunication devices, and low-energy beacons) be leveraged best to allow for the seamless wayfinding of pedestrian travelers with functional disabilities in public urban indoor/outdoor spaces?
• Which wayfinding technologies, data products, and technology platforms afford a sustainable, scalable deployment in a large academic institution?

College campuses are notoriously complex to navigate, particularly for travelers with visual impairments. One of the key barriers for culturally and linguistically diverse people in accessing higher education is seeing themselves as full members of a college campus community. As a public university situated in the heart of downtown Portland, the PSU campus was an ideal setting for this experiment as it affords realistic wayfinding scenarios and mobility challenges in a public urban environment. In addition, PSU’s commitment to community service, equity, and inclusivity align with the project's goals of promoting community participation and access.

The researchers began with a review of the existing literature on the topic: Wayfinding tools for people with visual impairments in real-world settings: A literature review of recent studies.

TWO CASE STUDIES

The team conducted an initial pilot case study with a single participant, an adult who is deafblind. Complete findings from that case study were published in Frontiers in Education: Seamless wayfinding by a deafblind adult on an urban college campus: A case study on wayfinding performance, information preferences, and technology requirements. The participant completed three routes on the PSU campus using either a mobile app, verbal directions, or a tactile map. For this participant, confidence and wayfinding performance were lowest for the mobile app, while the tactile map afforded the highest wayfinding performance, confidence and satisfaction, and the fastest completion time.

A second case study involved a traveler with combined vision and hearing loss, who also had professional experience as an O&M specialist serving those with visual impairments across multiple states. This participant’s occupational and personal experiences were helpful to the research team in further refining their testing protocol. The original goal of the project had been to compare three methods of wayfinding assistance: tactile maps, verbal directions, and "GoodMaps," an accessible navigation app for iPhone and Android. In accordance with the insights from this participant, the researchers eliminated verbal directions from the next phase of the experiment.

WAYFINDING EXPERIMENT

In a larger experiment, participants were invited to partake in a series of wayfinding tasks, navigating three short routes on campus with both indoor and outdoor elements. Accompanied by an experimenter with professional experience in Orientation and Mobility, participants were asked to travel two different routes while using one of two possible wayfinding supports: a tactile map for one route, and the GoodMaps mobile app for the other.

A total of 28 people participated in the main data collection phase of the study and completed the experiment: 21 adolescents (between the ages of 14 and 18) and seven adults. Participants included people of color, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and people with varying levels of visual impairments. The immediate next step for the research team is consolidating individual-level data for each of the 28 participants, and coding and assessing their observed wayfinding behavior and performance. While data analysis is still in progress for the 28 participants, early findings from the two case studies indicate that the tactile map afforded the most effective wayfinding support.

FOCUS GROUPS

The research team conducted two focus groups, one with eight blind or visually impaired adults who did not have any hearing loss, and another with nine deafblind participants who use Tactile American Sign Language or close-range visual American Sign Language. Collective themes from the two focus groups included both the hope and promise of wayfinding apps for offering greater environmental literacy during real-world travel, and the limitations of using such apps.

Both groups expressed the need for apps to be designed in collaboration with travelers with visual impairments, because of the apps’ unique limitations in dynamic travel conditions. A specific theme that emerged amongst visually impaired travelers was that they have to use multiple apps to complete a single route, because each app is useful for a subset of wayfinding tasks.

Further description of the findings from the focus group with deafblind participants is provided in the open-access Frontiers in Education article: The use of wayfinding apps by deafblind travelers in an urban environment: Insights from focus groups.

COLLABORATION ACROSS DISCIPLINES

This study is a product of several innovative partnerships. The lead researcher on the project, Martin Swobodzinski, is an associate professor of geography at PSU specializing in human wayfinding, spatial knowledge acquisition, accessibility, and human-computer interaction. In 2017 he and Amy Parker of PSU's Special Education Department began this work by collaborating on a NITC Small Starts project: Electronic Wayfinding for Visually Impaired Travelers: Limitations and Opportunities. The current project expands upon that research.

Parker is the coordinator of PSU's Orientation and Mobility Program, a program for preparing orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists which launched in 2017. The program has spearheaded several initiatives including interactive O&M workshops in partnership with TriMet and a new conference in Portland, the Mobility Matters Summit, held for its fifth year in 2022.  

The collaborative research team included Swobodzinski, Parker, and graduate students in Geography and Special Education, as well as Elizabeth Schaller and Denise Snow of the American Printing House for the Blind. GoodMaps, the mobile wayfinding app used in the study, was created by the American Printing House for the Blind. GoodMaps engaged with developers at Intel to refine the accuracy of spatial information.

In May 2021, the GoodMaps team began scanning PSU's Smith Memorial Student Union onsite using Lidar equipment. In November of that year, GoodMaps collaborated with PSU's Disability Resource Center to host interested students and staff with visual impairments to informally evaluate the technology installation within SMSU. In December 2021, the refined version of the GoodMaps installation was ready for research participants to evaluate.

The Digital City Testbed Center (DCTC) at Portland State University works towards establishing a network of campuses in the Pacific Northwest where smart city technologies can be tested before being deployed in communities at large. DCTC’s support of this project allowed the hiring of a graduate research assistant, Julie Wright, who contributed to the achievement of project milestones and the creation of project deliverables.

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from Portland State University, the PSU Digital City Testbed Center, and the American Printing House for the Blind.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Pedestrian Wayfinding Under Consideration of Visual Impairment, Blindness, and Deafblindness: A Mixed-Method Investigation Into Individual Experiences and Supporting Elements

Martin Swobodzinski and Amy Parker, Portland State University

• Download the Final Report (PDF)
• Download the Project Brief (PDF)
• Register for the Dec 15 Webinar: Wayfinding by Individuals with Functional Disability in Indoor and Outdoor Spaces

RELATED RESEARCH

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

• A Comprehensive Examination of Electronic Wayfinding Technology for Visually Impaired Travelers in an Urban Environment
• Developing Strategies To Enhance Mobility And Accessibility For Community-Dwelling Older Adults
• The Role of Bus Stop Features in Facilitating Accessibility

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is one of seven U.S. Department of Transportation national university transportation centers. NITC is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. This PSU-led research partnership also includes the Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah. We pursue our theme — improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities — through research, education and technology transfer.

Researchers Ivis Garcia, Sadika Maheruma Khan, and Kevin Fagundo-Ojeda of the University of Utah with Miriam Abelson and Nicholas Puczkowskyj of Portland State University have published a new article in the November 2022 issue of Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment.

Scholarship on gendered mobilities has shown that women experience transit differently than men do, particularly regarding personal safety. The article, "Harassment of low-income women on transit: A photovoice project in Oregon and Utah," makes a unique contribution to this body of literature because it shows that women feel targeted also based on their racial or ethnic identity and not only their gender. The article discusses women’s actions every day to increase their sense of safety.

Research has shown that low-income women who are transit-dependent experience unique disadvantages while riding, waiting, or trying to access public transit. In response to harassment, women might increase car dependency, which has negative environmental and public health impacts.

Given the importance of women feeling safe when using public transit to quality of life, public health, and ecological and economic sustainability, this research has implications for the planning and administration of public transit systems. Highlights from the findings include:

• Past policies like redlining result in unsafe spaces today.
• Truly safe spaces must account for experiences of low-income women of color.
• The research participants suggest some societal and transit agency changes to improve safety, including police, monitors next to businesses, additional lighting and safety booths with phones at light rail stops.

The paper is based on the in-progress project Marginalized Populations’ Access to Transit: Journeys from Home and Work to Transit, led by Marisa Zapata of Portland State University and funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC). The research employs a photovoice methodology which includes in-depth interviews and phone texting with 22 low-income women of color who ride transit at least a few times a month in Oregon and Utah.

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is one of seven U.S. Department of Transportation national university transportation centers. NITC is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. This PSU-led research partnership also includes the Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah. We pursue our theme — improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities — through research, education and technology transfer.

Students at Hood River Middle School in Hood River, Oregon, will get some hands-on transportation experience next spring as they participate in the redesign of bike and pedestrian infrastructure around their school. Members of the (tentatively named) "Better Blocks Club," a new after-school extracurricular club, will get the chance to observe infrastructure, go on field trips by bike, learn urban planning best practices, and be involved in implementing a pilot safety project.

They'll be helping to plan and install new pop-up pedestrian and bike facilities at the intersection of May Street and 17th/18th Streets, a dogleg intersection adjacent to their school. The intersection design, which will include a protected intersection near the school and pop-up mobility lanes on the approaching streets, was created by PSU civil engineering students as part of the Better Block PSU program.

After the 6-month pilot demonstration is complete, the project will undergo community feedback and design modifications before infrastructure is permanently installed by the City of Hood River.

Left: Intersection of 17th/May St (Google Street View, 2022). Right: Map of the project location.

HOW DID THIS PROJECT COME ABOUT?

The project is led by Megan Ramey, Hood River County School District's Safe Routes to School Manager and founder of a bike tourism site, Bikabout, which encourages families and new riders to wander by bike in North America. In 2020 Ramey, then a parent of a 4th grader at May Street Elementary, organized a Bike Parade for National Walk & Roll to School Day. Inspired by the pandemic, an everyday Bike Train (a variation of the Walking School Bus) began as a permanent feature in March 2021 when the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) granted funding to support the bike train and add a walking bus.

• Related: A similar bike bus made headlines this year in Portland, led by Alameda Elementary School PE teacher Sam Balto. Balto has been involved with Better Block PSU before too, heading up a Safer Route to the César Chávez School project in 2021. Ramey said of Balto: "We're rousers, partners in crime, and it's so wonderful because we're showing what can be done, both in a rural setting and a city setting, for bike train and bike bus; and hopefully inspiring a bunch of people around the country to do it."

The Bike Train was a catalyst for this project. Aware of the need for safety improvements at the intersection in front of the middle school, where her daughter is now a student, Ramey submitted a proposal to Better Block PSU, a partnership program between the volunteer-led group Better Block PDX and Portland State University. The project was selected to move forward, with PSU transportation students working to provide design and consulting services for the safety improvements.

"There's a couple of things that this project is doing. One is engaging the actual users of the design before it goes in the ground – So, the students. And second, it's engaging young people from the very beginning of a project, which is rarely ever done," Ramey said.

In the spring of 2022, PSU students Ashley Arries, Atiporn Huayhongtong, Ahmad Alateeqi, Ali AlQaatri, and Reem Almoumen prepared five design alternatives for Hood River Middle School Gateway bike/ped improvements at the May/17th/18th street intersection. The project analysis and creation of alternative facility designs were part of their coursework for Project Management and Design, a Civil & Environmental Engineering capstone course. May Street currently has no stop sign on the eastbound approach to the school, and the existing bike lane ends right before reaching the school. In front of the middle school is a high-use crosswalk with low visibility and no curb ramp. In fact, many pedestrian approaches to the middle school are lacking curb ramps. The design options provided by the students aim to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety and accessibility in what is currently a high-risk area for students.

The six-month pilot demonstration is supported by an ODOT Safety Grant. With the relatively inexpensive popup project, "we're bridging the gap between no infrastructure and one million dollar infrastructure," Ramey said.

STUDENT-LED DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS BRING SAFE ROUTES TO LIFE

The momentum and enthusiasm for active transportation safety in Hood River continues to build. Ramey gave a presentation about this project to a meeting of the Transportation Options Group of Oregon (TOGO) on Friday, September 30. Watch a recording of that presentation (starts at 59:30, passcode is w!m^B#&1 to access the Zoom), or view the presentation slides.

In addition to funding the bike train and walking bus, ODOT is also supporting a "safety rodeo" to add walking and biking curriculum to physical education classes, and a "Free Bikes 4 Kids" program, a partnership with Anson’s Bike Buddies where people can donate used bikes to be refurbished and provided to underserved children and their parents (around 100 bikes have been donated so far). In March and May of 2022, Ramey led safety rodeos at May Street and Mid Valley Elementary Schools, where "about sixty kids learned how to ride bikes from scratch."

The new pop-up project will be built in June or July of 2023, and the Better Blocks Club will be on the scene. Members of Hood River Middle School's new Better Blocks Club will be actively involved in the planning process for the intersection redesign, helping to brainstorm creative, low-cost materials and ways to implement the design. 

"Students will be installing it alongside the fire department, the police department, and the city public works department all together, and then it will be in the ground for five or six months. The students will take before-and-after travel counts and observe the behavior of both their peers and the local residents that are using it," Ramey said.

At the end of the year, members of the Better Blocks Club (or whatever the students end up naming it – Ramey wants them to have ownership of the club and their mission) will have the opportunity to become certified in responsible bicycling behavior. Tentatively called the bike ethics & safety certification, this certificate will be the first of its kind in the U.S., modeled after bike safety education programs in the Netherlands for 11 to 12 year olds.

Future goals, for Ramey, include launching an "E-biker’s Ed" class for high school students in Hood River. (Read "Dawn of the 'Throttle Kids'", a BikePortland article written by Megan Ramey in July 2022.)

In a 2018 Safe Routes to School survey, just 14% of middle school parents said they would let their kids walk or bike to school, despite saying they strongly support safe walking or biking access to school.

In May 2022, the Hood River City Council officially adopted a Safe Routes to School Plan.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.

Researchers Jennifer Dill, Jiahui Ma, Nathan McNeil, Joseph Broach and John MacArthur of Portland State University have published a new article in the November 2022 issue of Transportation Part D: Transport and Environment. The open-access article, "Factors influencing bike share among underserved populations: Evidence from three U.S. cities," examines bike share use and interest among lower-income residents and people of color in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

There is evidence that lower-income and people of color (POC) in the U.S. do not use bike share as much as higher-income and white people. Using data from residents living near bike share stations in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the paper examines reasons for these disparities. Researchers looked at many factors that might explain bike share use and interest in lower-income, racially diverse, traditionally underserved neighborhoods. They focused on residents who live near bike share stations, so that proximity would not be a barrier.

A few key findings:

1. People who are not members, but are interested in using bike share, including POC, are motivated to use bike share for fun, recreation, and social reasons (as opposed to utility).
2. Knowledge of bike share and receiving information from interactive sources (for example, bike share ambassadors) are associated with bike share use.
3. Cost is a barrier for people who are interested in using bike share, but are not members. Discounted memberships are one solution, but survey results indicate that many people do know know about them.

Some reasons for not using bike share among people of color and lower-income people may also be related to reasons for not bicycling, generally. These include concerns about traffic safety as well as personal safety.

Some of the barriers to bike share reported by low-income respondents of color in a 2017 survey

This paper is an analysis of data collected in a "Breaking Barriers to Bike Share" project funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP). Read more about the original study and explore some of the products to come out of this research, including a set of ten bike share equity briefs to help operators establish equity programs based on what's been shown to work.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research.