When the COVID-19 pandemic first swept across North America and led to emergency shutdowns during the spring of 2020, the way people acquired food and household necessities was dramatically impacted. As stay-at-home orders minimized personal travel, transit services were reduced and many stores and restaurants either closed or modified their operations. 

Some of the gaps were filled by online retailers and delivery services. However, access to goods and services varied substantially depending on people's age, income level, and ability.

A new multi-university study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the U.S. DOT-funded university transportation headquartered at Portland State University, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) captured how households responded as local, state, and federal governments imposed and lifted restrictions, brick-and-mortar establishments closed and reopened, and e-commerce and delivery services adjusted to the changing conditions.

The findings of this research are critical for emergency planning, but also for understanding the ever-changing mechanisms used to access retail and service opportunities (whether in person or online). The research identifies opportunities for future interventions to remedy barriers to accessing food, which will remain relevant even after the pandemic recovery.

THE RESEARCH

The project was led by Kelly Clifton of Portland State University (now a professor at the University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning), Kristina Currans of the University of Arizona, and Amanda Howell and Rebecca Lewis of the University of Oregon. The research team also included Paula Carder, director of PSU's Institute on Aging, and graduate students Max Nonnamaker and Gabriella Abou-Zeid. Nonnamaker used information from the focus groups to complete his masters degree in public health. Abou-Zeid, now a transportation data specialist at ICF, wrote her master's thesis on the adoption and use of e-grocery shopping in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which she presented at TRB 2022. Learn more: PSU Graduate Gabby Abou-Zeid Explores Implications of E-Grocery Shopping during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The researchers used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the extent to which people modified their shopping behavior during the COVID-19 crisis and following recovery. They administered four waves of cross-sectional online surveys to households in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington, from September 2020 through November 2021. These surveys were designed to understand: 

• How have people accessed essential goods during the pandemic crisis and recovery periods?
• What barriers have certain subgroups faced in accessing essential goods?
• And to what extent do/can online platforms help meet demand?

The four waves of surveys in five states produced a unique and rich dataset documenting the grocery shopping behaviors, preferences, and attitudes of consumers during important phases of the pandemic, including: the initial economic reopening in 2020; the loosening and tightening of restrictions through fall and winter of 2020; the emergence of the vaccine in January 2021; and the surge of cases associated with the Delta variant in summer and fall of 2021. Data from the surveys have been made publicly available for future use by researchers. Access the dataset here: Data from "Consumer Responses to Household Provisioning During COVID-19 Crisis" and "Recovery and Accessing Opportunities for Household Provisioning Post-COVID-19.

To complement the survey data, the researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with a subset of the population—older adults, and friends and family members who had helped them order online—to learn how they adjusted to the conditions of COVID19 in their grocery shopping. Researchers chose to focus on older adults because they are more likely to experience mobility barriers, COVID vulnerabilities, and lack of digital resources or knowledge.

KEY FINDINGS

Findings indicate that in-store food shopping is a mainstay for household provisioning and will likely remain so into the future. Yet, during the pandemic, many households experimented with online shopping and reported a high level of satisfaction with it. Even as people returned to stores, online shopping did not drop off and instead showed a gradual increase over the four waves of the survey. Survey respondents predicted that they will continue to use online shopping at the same or higher rate in the future.

Shoppers mainly drove to retailers to acquire food, but there were changes in mode shares over the course of the pandemic. Walking, cycling, transit, and ridehailing all saw increases in usage over the four waves of the survey.

The biggest limitations to the future growth of e-commerce in the food sector are the inability to inspect items for quality, and delivery fees. While some barriers to online grocery shopping persist, it is clear that it can and does fill important gaps for people. It is a valued option in situations where people have mobility limitations, are quarantining or are sick with COVID, facing time pressures, or stores are not easily accessible.

When asked about barriers to food access, more people cited mobility barriers—such as not owning a vehicle or having a mobility-limiting condition—than technological ones, such as access to smartphones or broadband internet. The focus groups with older adults provided more context. Most respondents rated their digital acumen as high, and they were mostly confident in their technology skills. Being on fixed incomes, their desire to minimize costs, utilize coupons, and shop sales reinforced their preferences for in-store shopping.

"Online ordering can help overcome mobility barriers. However, both our quantitative and qualitative data results point to the idea that many people still want to be able to inspect food items for quality and freshness, and this isn’t something that is going to be easily solved by technology. I think this points to the continued importance of making sure we’re filling mobility gaps and using all the tools available in the practitioner toolbox to incentivize local stores in every neighborhood. These don’t have to be large grocers, but just places that offer a variety of fresh foods which can supplement the dry/bulk items and other household items that people are more comfortable ordering online. No doubt this is easier said than done, but I think it’s important to always come back to this idea that technology is a tool but not a solution unto itself," said Howell.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS

These results have implications for planning for food access into the future, including widespread emergency events such as the pandemic, as well as changes in circumstances that individuals may experience.

"Practitioners—whether they work in public, private, or advocacy institutions—require evidence and data to both identify opportunities to tailor their services to those most in need and to support funding requests that enable them to provide new or different services. One of the biggest contributions of this work is the data itself, capturing behavior across a multitude of built and social environments over the course of one year," said Currans.

Understanding the impacts of the pandemic on food access and the adoption and use of e-commerce platforms has benefits to transportation planners and urban planners (the results can likely inform the provision of parking, land use, road capacity, and internet connectivity), as well as public health professionals. The popularity of ordering online but picking up in-store indicates that people value the time savings but do not want to pay delivery fees. Should this increase in the future, the amount of parking needed at these stores may be reduced, as there may be shorter dwell times and higher turnover.

The research offers insights about who lacks access to food resources, who is adopting technology, how new behaviors intersect with old ones, and the potential "stickiness" of these behaviors as we recover from the pandemic.

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities and the National Science Foundation, with additional support from  Portland State University, the University of Arizona, and the University of Oregon.

ABOUT THE PROJECT 

Accessing Opportunities for Household Provisioning Post-COVID-19

Kelly Clifton, Portland State University; Kristina Currans, University of Arizona; Amanda Howell, University of Oregon

• Download the Final Report (PDF)
• Download the Project Brief (PDF)
• Access the Public Dataset: Data from "Consumer Responses to Household Provisioning During COVID-19 Crisis" and "Recovery and Accessing Opportunities for Household Provisioning Post-COVID-19.

RELATED RESEARCH

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

• The Impact of Ride Hail Services on the Accessibility of Nonprofit Services
• Emerging Technologies and Cities: Assessing the Impacts of New Mobility on Cities
• Life-Space Mobility and Aging in Place

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.

Travel time reliability – or the consistency and dependability of travel times from day to day, and at different times of day – is a key metric that significantly affects people’s travel behavior. Since businesses rely heavily on transportation systems, an unreliable transportation network can also impact the economic competitiveness of urban areas. As such, reliable travel times are important for transportation agencies to promote economic stability within a community. Having accurate methods to evaluate reliability is important for both transportation practitioners and researchers.

A new report from Portland State University offers an improved method for determining the confidence interval of travel time reliability metrics. Researchers Avinash Unnikrishnan, Subhash Kochar and Miguel Figliozzi of PSU’s Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science used a highway corridor in Portland, Oregon as a case study to evaluate their method, and found that it compared favorably with other methods of evaluating the confidence interval of travel time reliability metrics.

"Traffic engineers can apply this method to come up with a range of estimates for the unknown true travel time reliability metric. The travel time reliability metrics calculated by traffic engineers and transportation planners will have variability due to factors such as road and mode type. The methods proposed in this research can be used to make inferences on travel time reliability metrics which accounts for this variability. Traffic engineers can apply the methods to attach statistical guarantees to the travel time reliability metrics," Unnikrishnan said.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

This research is timely because the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent changes in traffic levels have highlighted the need to quickly compare and better understand the behavior of most commonly used traffic reliability measures.

One challenge for the research team: there is a general lack of consensus on the population distribution of travel times. Depending on the study and the context, a wide variety of distributions have been found to be appropriate. To overcome this difficulty, the researchers developed confidence interval procedures that are general because they are independent of the type of travel time distributions, and can work for a wide range of distribution shapes. This makes the evaluation method more flexible and able to be applied in different situations.

The methods they developed can be used to arrive at practical estimates of changes in traffic, which can help transportation agencies maintain consistent travel times across a roadway network. The outcomes of this project can also help transportation researchers to test other travel time reliability measures, and conduct before-and-after travel time reliability evaluation studies with improved accuracy.

PORTLAND, OREGON CASE STUDY

Next, researchers applied these approaches to a real-world case study. The data for the case study came from the Portland, OR metropolitan region and was originally collected and analyzed as part of an earlier NITC project, Understanding Factors Affecting Arterial Reliability Performance Metrics. In that project, Unnikrishnan worked with PSU civil engineering researchers Sirisha Kothuri and Jason Anderson to understand the temporal variation in travel time reliability metrics on three major arterials in Washington County. 

Map of the study corridor; a stretch of Tualatin-Sherwood road from OR 99W to SW Nyberg Street.

Using the data from one of those three arterials—Tualatin-Sherwood Road from OR 99W to SW Nyberg Street—the research team of the current study estimated confidence intervals for three different travel time reliability metrics: buffer index, modified buffer index, and the relative width of travel time distributions. 

Where a travel time index is the average additional time required during peak times as compared to times of light traffic, the buffer index represents the additional time that is necessary above the average peak travel time. In this project, researchers considered two forms of buffer index. First, the ratio of 95th percentile travel time to sample average travel time minus one. The modified buffer index refers to the ratio of 95th percentile travel time to median travel time minus one. 

The relative width of travel time distributions is defined as the ratio of the range of travel times in which 80% of the observations around the median fall into the median travel time. In another NITC project focused on buses, PSU researchers Travis Glick and Miguel Figliozzi used a similar metric for understanding transit reliability using speed data. 

The research team compared their new methods against several existing methods and found that they worked well: Numerical tests showed a positive performance and high statistical power for analyzing the available travel time data. More details about the process can be found in the final report.

Photo courtesy of Google Streetview

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from the Oregon Department of Transportation.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Statistical Inference for Multimodal Travel Time Reliability

Avinash Unnikrishnan, Miguel Andres Figliozzi and Subhash Kochar; Portland State University

• Download the Final Report (PDF)
• Download the Project Brief (PDF)
• Access the Dataset

RELATED RESEARCH

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

• Understanding Factors Affecting Arterial Reliability Performance Metrics
• Data-Driven Mobility Strategies for Multimodal Transportation
• Using High-Resolution Bus Detection Data to Improve Travel Time Prediction and Identify Urban Congestion Spots

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.

A group of nine transportation students traveled to Denmark and Sweden this past summer, to meet with planners and engineers and get a feel for on-the-ground transportation in Copenhagen and Stockholm. They explored the area by rail, foot, bike and boat, in between presentations and tours led by professionals. 

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC)'s associate director, Hau Hagedorn, and sustainable transportation program manager, John MacArthur, led the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) Study Abroad program. See photos from the trip.

In past years they've traveled to the Netherlands to experience the Dutch approach to cycling infrastructure and multimodal travel. This year, they decided to expand the mission. Copenhagen, like Amserdam, is sometimes referred to as the cycling capital of the world. Stockholm, along with some of the world's most progressive congestion mitigation policies, also boasts a robust multimodal public transportation system that includes ferries. 

Why host a study abroad program on sustainable transportation? Seeing infrastructure up close and personal, using it, is much more impactful than studying it any other way.

"One thing that we really pushed this year was that the time in-country was about experiencing the place, riding the roads, using the system, watching people on the system and talking with experts. The streets were our classroom," MacArthur said.

Some of the trip's highlights included: 

• A presentation and meeting with Lars Ekman, senior advisor of traffic safety at the Swedish Transport Administration. He spoke to the group about Vision Zero, which was pioneered in Sweden.
• A bike ride led by Henrik Söderström and Theo Bratt, with Stockholms Stad (City of Stockholm);
• A presentation on public transit by Mattias Lundberg of the City of Stockholm Transport Department;
• The Traffic Garden (Trafiklegepladsen), a playground financed by the city of Copenhagen to educate kids and adults on real-world traffic navigation;
• The Park 'n' Play, a parking garage with a playground on top, located in one of Copenhagen’s newly redeveloped boroughs, Nordhavn, which the group heard more about from architect Charlotte Algren;
• A guided bike tour to the Norrebro section of Copenhagen with Tina Saaby, a former sustainability architect with the City of Copenhagen;
• The Amager Resource Center (ARC), a power plant that generates energy for much of Copenhagen using recycled waste;
• A presentation from the manager of transportation planning and the cordon pricing policy for the City of Stockholm, followed by a trip to see the electric autonomous shuttle buses currently being tested in the suburb of Barkarbystaden;
• The Stockholm Transport Museum and the Vasa Museum, with its preserved 17th century sunken ship;
• A bike infrastructure and Levande “pedestrian streets” tour of Stockholm with city planners. 

"Lars Ekman, senior advisor of traffic safety at Swedish Transport Administration, talked to us about Vision Zero. He showed us intersection renovations that reduce fatal accidents. It’s all about reducing speed and impact, so that crashes aren’t fatal," said PSU student Tanja Olson.

The group also toured Copenhagen's canals by boat, explored urban art installations and green spaces, and visited Stockholm's Royal Palace and Seaport and the Stockholm Transport Museum. Speaking with the planners and engineers that made those areas possible offered unique perspectives.

"Because they have limited road space, they have to think differently and creatively. In Sweden, they put snow-melting conduits in their sidewalks. A student went out on a walk and took a picture of the conduits in the road. We were all blown away! It's all framed under the larger umbrella of sustainability and climate change," Hagedorn said.

In addition to guided tours, students got to test out the transportation system by roaming around on their own. On their final day in Copenhagen, MacArthur sent the students on a scavenger hunt to find various transportation easter eggs: a child riding alone, unique transportation features from a neighborhood, or a tiny pedal-powered coffee cart. Among other things, they found many urban-dwelling trolls, all made using recycled and sustainable materials by artist Thomas Dambo. 

The study abroad program, administered through IBPI, was supported in part by a grant from the Scan Design Foundation, which made it possible to offer scholarships to underrepresented students.

"Learning from others, experiencing other places and experimenting with new ideas are the foundation of the transportation profession. I often hear, we can't be like Copenhagen or the Netherlands in terms of cycling. Well, when you go there you see that the cities in Europe are in many ways like US cities – people, streets, buildings. You find out that these cities didn't always have high cycling rates but with the right will, policies, and some good design they created interesting and vibrant communities," MacArthur said.

The program is open to students from any university, not just PSU. This year's cohort consisted of five PSU students, two from Oregon Tech, one from the University of Arizona and one from San Jose State. University of Arizona Master of Science in Urban Planning student Zsalina Allen's participation was highlighted recently in UA news. The students came from both planning and engineering backgrounds. One PSU participant, Phil Armand, is also an engineering associate at the Portland Bureau of Transportation. 

"I wanted to see Scandinavia’s multimodal sustainable infrastructure in action, to increase my knowledge so I can improve transportation design in my work as an engineer. ... What I found was a biking paradise in Copenhagen and a pedestrian's dream in Stockholm. From biking to and from the suburbs to five-minute cities; a train every three minutes to e-bike share; a power station run off of recycling, and so many ways to be sustainable. I found that the public transportation system was accessible to all, sustainable, and reliable," Armand said.

Accessible transportation is a primary factor contributing to the quality of life enjoyed by western Europeans, according to Cameron Bennett, PSU engineering masters student.

"As I have become more aware of the societal and cultural factors supporting a high quality of life, I have realized that an effectively-managed land use and transportation system is a major reason why life seems so good in Western Europe," Bennett said. 

Caroline Schulze, a civil engineering student at Oregon Tech, agrees that a multimodal transportation system improves city life: "By focusing on the humans instead of the cars, transportation will have to work for people instead of around them," Schulze said.

The two-week study abroad, from June 18–July 2, 2022, was an extension of a spring course, Sustainable Transportation in Copenhagen & Stockholm, available as part of the civil engineering as well as urban studies & planning course catalogs. Interested in potentially studying abroad in 2023? Sign up here to be notified about future study abroad opportunities.

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 Rob Hemphill, John MacArthur, Jennifer Dill and Philip Longenecker of Portland State University; Garima Desai of the University of California, Santa Cruz; Lillie Nie of the University of Southern California; and Abbey Ibarra of California State Polytechnic University-Pomona have published an article in the August 2022 issue of the Journal of Transport and Land Use.

The article, "Congested sidewalks: The effects of the built environment on e-scooter parking compliance," offers recommendations for policymakers and future research around the impacts of the built environment on electric scooter (e-scooter) parking.

With the proliferation of e-scooters in cities across the world, concerns have arisen about users parking them on sidewalks and in other public spaces. Research has looked at e-scooter parking compliance and compared compliance to other mobility devices, but until now, research had not yet examined the impacts of the built environment on parking compliance. Using a field observation dataset in Portland, Oregon, and novel GIS data, the authors attempt to understand the spatial distribution of e-scooter parking and the impact of built features on parking compliance.

The results of the study show that 76% of e-scooters observed fail at least one of Portland’s parking compliance requirements and 59% fail at least two criteria. However, compliance varies spatially and by violation type, indicating that parking compliance (or non-compliance) is dependent on features of the built environment. In particular:

• Parking compliance is significantly higher on blocks with designated e-scooter parking than blocks without designated e-scooter parking.
• A statistically significant relationship is observed between the amount of legally parkable area on a city block and parking compliance.
• Parking compliance increases with larger percentages of legally parkable area. 

These findings can help policymakers prioritize dedicated e-scooter parking for blocks with limited legally parkable area.

Three of the paper's co-authors (Ibarra, Desai and Nie) were past fellows in the Transportation Undergraduate Research Fellowship (TURF) program at Portland State University.

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 introduce four new transportation scholarship recipients at Portland State University for the 2022/23 academic year. Congratulations to Peter Domine, Lise Ferguson, Kyu Ri Kim, and Valeria Tapia, all students in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning!

Scholarships are made possible by the generosity of donors who want to invest in the future of Portland State students. PSU students work on real transportation system projects with partners in our community. Through scholarships, we can support students in overcoming barriers to funding as well as acknowledging those who go above and beyond in advancing transportation. Learn more about PSU transportation funding opportunities and read about past transportation scholars.

Peter Domine

Recipient of the Walter H. Kramer Endowed Transportation Fellowship

I am a lifelong Oregonian and Salemite. I love history, which is where much of my interest in urban planning came from. I am fascinated by many subjects and that is also why I enjoy urban planning so much, because it touches on so many interrelated topics. I’ve worked most of my young adult life in a variety of jobs, mostly bartending for the past few years. Working as a bartender at a local downtown restaurant was a great way to connect with my community and gave me a deeper appreciation for my city. This perspective has been deeply influential in my pursuit of a planning degree and my future profession. This was also a great way to make ends meet while still having a lot of freedom and flexibility to explore things that interested me, such as cycling. I took up road cycling about five years ago and that has been a great outlet for exercise, exploring my community, and traveling. I’ve done a few long-distance trips by bike and hope to do more, especially around the Northwest.

Connect with Peter on LinkedIn.

Lise Ferguson

Recipient of the Walter H. Kramer Endowed Transportation Fellowship

I graduated from the University of Washington in 2013, where I got a degree in Environmental Studies, but the jobs I ended up getting were lackluster administrative positions for environmental-adjacent companies. I moved to Portland soon after graduating because I loved how fun and interactive the city was, and because I really liked riding my bike here! Because the jobs I found myself working were unrewarding, I began volunteering with some solid organizations that better aligned with my passions: The Street Trust, City Repair Project, and BikeLoudPDX. It was through working with these groups that I started to understand the ways in which planning defines a city, and how it can improve or hurt the lives of the people living in it. I was already spending so much of my time  talking and thinking about bike lanes and car-free plazas and road diets that I decided I might as well go back to school and try to make some changes from a position where I would have more power, and here I am!

Connect with Lise on LinkedIn.

Kyu Ri Kim

Recipient of the Alta Planning and Design Scholarship

As a Ph.D. student of Urban Studies at the College of Urban and Public Affairs, I am a student representative participating in monthly faculty meetings for the 2021-2022 academic year and I also have had the opportunity to participate in the following projects of TREC at PSU with Dr. Jennifer Dill: a research review for AASHTO Council on Active Transportation Research Roadmap, and descriptive analysis for the Active Transportation Return on the Investment project. At PSU, learning various statistical programs such as SPSS, R, and Mplus and geographic information systems such as ArcGIS Pro and using them in research related to active transportation makes me a more productive and efficient researcher. Before coming to PSU, I worked in Korea Environment Institute as a researcher after achieving my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Read more about Kyu Ri's award on the Alta Planning Blog.

Valeria Tapia

Recipient of the IBPI Innovation in Active Transportation Endowed Scholarship

I am an emerging planner and a first-year student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning. I'm passionate about community development, active transportation, equity, and environmental planning. I desire to advance active transportation initiatives that are inclusive and promote safety. With a Bachelor of Science degree in  Community Development, I am a community advisory member on the South Portland Historic Guidelines Committee with the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. I am also an intern at the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability on Portland's Lower Southeast Rising Project. The project is a partnership between the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability and the Portland Bureau of Transportation. My recent experience has continued to ignite my passion to find solutions for communities living in east Portland.

Connect with Valeria 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.

How can community members become more engaged in transportation decision making?

Individuals and groups can learn to effect powerful change, but success requires some familiarity with how civic processes work. Community Transportation Academies, or CTAs, provide a basic technical understanding of how a city or region’s transportation system operates, along with the decision makers and decision-making processes that determine how the system is shaped.

Supported by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the new Wasatch Transportation Academy (WTA) at the University of Utah was piloted in 2022 in the Salt Lake City region. The research team developed a course vision, topics, and logistics for the WTA by interviewing stakeholders in the Utah Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, the Utah Department of Transportation, the Utah Transit Authority, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, and the Wasatch Front Regional Council. Led by Nathan McNeil of Portland State University and Keith Bartholomew of the University of Utah, the WTA used the established Portland Traffic and Transportation class in Portland, Oregon as a framework. 

As part of an earlier NITC project in 2015, McNeil had developed a Course Curriculum and Implementation Handbook based on the Portland class. Now the handbook has been updated to include lessons from the Wasatch course so that other cities and counties looking to start a transportation academy in their community can learn from those examples. Access the new Community Transportation Academy: Course Curriculum and Implementation Handbook here (PDF). The researchers will share more about this work in an October 20 webinar.

FOSTERING A MORE INVOLVED COMMUNITY

Community transportation academies provide community members the knowledge and tools to get involved and help make the transportation system a reflection of their input and values. 

“This is an investment in community capital [in the Salt Lake City region], and that's how we are thinking of it. Like most investments, the rewards are substantial, but they are built off of a long arc,” Bartholomew said.

Thinking far into the future means there is no shortage of possibilities. Andrea Olson, Planning Director of the Utah Department of Transportation, encourages community members to become proactively involved in transportation projects in the early stages: "As a resident, the earlier on you can get involved, the more influence you can have on what a transportation project looks like. The further you get along in the life of a project, the less opportunity there is for changing it. It can be hard to get people engaged in a 30-year planning process, but once they understand that's really where everything is on the table, that provides some motivation," Olson said.

Olson, who was an instructor in this year's WTA, says she hopes the course continues to grow in popularity. "I want to see people out at transportation meetings and open houses. One of the things I encouraged the course participants to do was, get on your planning commission or get elected, because that's a great way to really have some say in what's happening," she said.

 In addition to instructing students on how transportation decision-making works behind the scenes, transportation academies let community members work on their own transportation problems. The WTA included community-led project presentations and an in-person field trip of a local transportation project in the process of being implemented.  Feedback showed a high degree of satisfaction, with around 40 percent of participants indicating that they were, or would be in the near future, more engaged in various transportation-related community activities after taking part in the academy.

“The biggest takeaway for me was the level of coordination between agencies that is required for these projects, especially when different agencies may have different goals or metrics for success. It was also helpful to learn that getting involved earlier in the planning process can have a greater impact on the final form a project takes on than just responding to plans that have been put out,” shared one WTA participant.

Ted Knowlton, deputy director of the Wasatch Front Regional Council, served as an advisor on the project and believes that increasing the number of advocates in the region is one key function of the academy. "Advocacy punches above its weight – it's way more effective than you would guess from the number of people involved. Those residents that are opinion leaders, that show up to public meetings, that volunteer on committees or what have you: When that component of the population is knowledgeable, it tends to elevate the quality of the dialogue and ultimately the quality of the outcomes in planning. Because they have a high level of knowledge, they're pushing the state of the practice towards generally good ends," Knowlton said.

As the WTA moves into its second year, we look forward to seeing the real-world impacts of projects in Utah. Bartholomew and McNeil spoke about that hope on an April 2022 episode of The Brake, a Streetsblog USA podcast.

REPLICATING THE TRANSPORTATION ACADEMY

The WTA course was held on Monday evenings for eight weeks during January-March 2022 (view class recordings here), reaching 49 community members.  Taking notes from the locally-focused Portland course, the Utah team gave the Wasatch academy a broader regional focus. Using a online format facilitated this, as students could attend from anywhere.

“The curriculum handbook documents the structure of this sort of class and offers a set of potential topics that you could cover, along with some advice and wisdom from the places that have done it before. Drawing on the experiences of Portland and Salt Lake, it gives you the outline. You still have to do the work, and you still have to find the champions and the supporters, but it is important to learn from those that have done it,” McNeil said.

The Course Curriculum and Implementation Handbook (PDF) offers an overview of the key elements of a CTA, as well as class assignments that help participants develop an idea for a transportation improvement in their community. The handbook also includes: 

• Feedback from previous course graduates;
• Guidance for practical items like establishing a budget, finding presenters, developing course materials and recruiting students;
• Detailed outlines for ten class sessions covering topics like transit planning, active transportation, how to be involved in decision-making, transportation equity, and the history of transportation in your city or area;
• Advice to get the ball rolling for a new academy. An important first step is finding a “champion,” someone willing to fight to get funding and rally leadership to support the class. Other key operating principles include recruiting top agency staff to participate, building an advisory network, fostering communication between community members and agency staff, and establishing a neutral setting for the course, such as a university or community center.

“The WTA is going to be more fully integrated as part of the master's curriculum here at the University of Utah. It's becoming a practicum in community engagement for master planning students as well as being a community class open to the public." Bartholomew said. Establishing more communication between existing CTAs is also part of his vision for the future. The final report introduces a few CTAs beyond Portland and Utah, including the Surrey Transportation Talks Program in the City of Surrey, Canada and the Tampa Bay Citizens Academy on Transportation, launched by the University of Southern Florida and the City of Tampa in the fall of 2021.

Matthew Ryan, a second-year masters student in UU's College of Architecture + Planning, worked on the project as a graduate research assistant, digging deeper into the Portland surveys and examining other academies around the country. One goal of this work, which the authors hope to share at the 2023 annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), is taking a deeper look at the intersections between emerging transportation academies, and how those connections might be further leveraged to improve and expand the reach of CTAs.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Launching the Wasatch Transportation Academy

Nathan McNeil, Portland State University; Keith Bartholomew, University of Utah

• Download the Final Report (PDF)
• Download the Curriculum and Implementation Handbook
• Download the Project Brief (PDF)
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This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from the University of Utah, Utah Transit Authority, Wasatch Front Regional Council, Utah Department of Transportation, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City Transportation Division, and the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

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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.

The Transportation Undergraduate Research Fellowship (TURF) program at Portland State University has hosted twenty-four fellows since 2017, and recently wrapped up its summer 2022 session. This year, six undergraduate researchers worked on projects aimed at improving the safety and efficiency of multimodal transportation systems. The research goals ranged from surveying pedestrian count programs and safety performance functions across the country, to reviewing case studies of tactical curb extensions and collecting pedestrian data at intersections. 

Hosted by PSU’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), the TURF fellows also experience a variety of workshops with PSU faculty and staff on research, communication and data science skills. They attended the 2022 Forth Mobility Roadmap Conference in June, and participated in networking events with the Portland chapters of YPT and WTS. Here is some of what the students had to say about the experience:

"I enjoyed all of the experiences surrounding my time here at TREC, but I loved the workshops. I especially enjoyed Dr. Golub's workshop around transportation equity, as it was laid-back and invited dialogue. It was an honest, open-ended conversation with someone who had a lot of information to share."

"The Forth Roadmap Conference was eye opening. I participated in an e-bike tour where I learned how to use Biketown and this has been an invaluable resource to me all summer. We spoke to many vendors and learned about Portland's electric buses, how electric vehicle car share programs can benefit low income and BIPOC communities, and successful programs internationally."

"I found Dr. Lubitow's workshop on qualitative and quantitative data really interesting. While I had known the distinction between both kinds of data, the value of this workshop came from our discussion on incentivizing marginalized populations to participate in qualitative data collection through interviews that have incentives like childcare and additional assistance."

TURF is supported by an education grant through our U.S. DOT funded UTC program the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC). Students are selected through a competitive application process, and many go on to do graduate research in transportation and become professionals:

• Several fellows are now young professionals in our industry: Jared Islas is a planner at Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Senna Phillips is a planner at NYC Transit, and Lauren Mullarkey-Williams is a planner/engineer at Gibson Transportation Consulting. Many others are now pursuing graduate degrees in planning and engineering.
• 2019 TURF fellows Abbey Ibarra, Garima Desai and Lillie Nie co-authored research during their time in the program, an August 2022 article in the Journal of Transport and Land Use published "Congested sidewalks: The effects of the built environment on e-scooter parking compliance."
• After completing her undergraduate studies at University of Arizona, 2018 TURF fellow Gabby Abou-Zeid went on to pursue a graduate degree in civil engineering with a focus on transportation at PSU. Earning numerous awards, including the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program’s Top Ranked Masters Fellow for 2019/2020, and a 2020 Eno Center for Transportation Future Leaders Development Conference Fellow, she is now a Transportation Data Specialist at ICF. Join us on Sept. 16, 2022 to hear from Gabby and FHWA Sr. Policy Analyst Allen Greenberg on their research on parking cash-out programs.

MEET THE 2022 TURF FELLOWS

Taj Ali, University of Oregon

Taj is a 3rd year undergraduate at the University of Oregon majoring in Planning, Public Policy, and Management (PPPM). Taj worked with faculty advisors Hau Hagedorn, Tammy Lee and John MacArthur to compare multimodal facilities on Portland's outer Division St and Powell Boulevard. What began as observing SE Powell Boulevard improvements evolved into a comparison of the Outer Powell Transportation Safety Project (led by ODOT) and the Outer Division Safety Project (led by PBOT). Taj researched solutions to gentrification and ways to mitigate its effects, creating a “toolkit” of best practices ranging from policies to creative initiatives. In the course of this investigation, Taj surveyed both segments and took photos documenting the layout of the infrastructure, facilities and transit access. His work highlighted features of the automobile traffic lanes, bike lanes, sidewalk characteristics and on-street parking and serves to illustrate the different needs and safety concerns that should be addressed in future development. 

Liam Anthony, Cornell University

Liam is an incoming sophomore pursuing a major in Urban and Regional Studies at Cornell University with academic interests in transportation economics, land use, and regional development. His first TURF project focus, working with faculty advisors Sirisha Kothuri and Nathan McNeil, was an investigation of surface commuter parking occupancy in Portland's Lloyd District. The aim of the project was to evaluate parking occupancy at ten surface-level Lloyd District lots to determine whether their individual use rose to the 85% occupancy standard used by the City of Portland. In a second project with Kothuri and McNeil, Liam identified locations of tactical curb extensions across the United States. Curb art converting marginal right-of-way into pedestrian spaces is an emerging urbanist practice which several cities have implemented as part of safety and placemaking projects. The goal of this project was to document additional examples, approaches to implementation, and outcomes for safety improvement.

Liam was also part of a team, with fellow TURF researchers Matthew Prak and Jason Grajales, involved in the extraction of pedestrian data using traffic footage from intersections across the state of Oregon. The three of them viewed hours of raw footage from several intersections with pedestrian push buttons, recording data on the pedestrians' behavior in crosswalks. Connect with Liam on LinkedIn.

Adri DeGuzman, Lewis & Clark College

Adri is pursuing a BA in English and Environmental Studies at Lewis & Clark College, and has an academic interest in American literature. She's also seeking to begin an ENVS thesis for Spring 2023 about road trip narratives and the automobile as literary motif in 20th and 21st century American literature. Her TURF project focus, with faculty advisors Hau Hagedorn, Tammy Lee, and John MacArthur, was investigating equitable access in Portland's Division transit corridor. As the population along SE Division Street grows, impacts on traffic and transit also increase. TriMet's Division Transit Project is intended to improve travel between Downtown Portland, Southeast and East Portland and Gresham with easier, faster and more reliable bus service. Adri's work aimed to evaluate potential equity impacts of the transit improvements along this corridor.

Jason Grajales, Portland State University

Jason is currently pursuing a degree in Civil Engineering at PSU with academic interests in designing bike infrastructure, affordable public transportation, walkable streets, pedestrian friendly areas, and providing easily accessible diverse forms of transportation for people to utilize. With faculty advisors Sirisha Kothuri and Nathan McNeil, Jason worked on a scan of pedestrian-related safety performance functions (SPFs) around the country. SPFs are statistical models to predict traffic injury, and are one of the tools used to locate high-risk areas prone to crashes. The goal of the research was to find examples of SPFs that are inclusive of pedestrians and account for factors specifically associated with pedestrian injuries. In addition to collecting data in the pedestrian push-button study with fellow TURF researchers Matthew and Liam, Jason also investigated an unmarked crosswalk at the intersection of West Burnside at SW 2nd Avenue, to see if the crossing met the demands to validate installation of a marked crosswalk. After reviewing video data, he determined that the maximum amount of foot traffic received in an hour is eight, which is short of the twenty required by PBOT's regulations to implement a crosswalk.

Matthew Prak, Oregon State University

Matthew Prak will be starting his sophomore year at Oregon State University during this upcoming fall. He is majoring in civil engineering and is interested in specializing in the transportation engineering field. In addition to collecting data in the pedestrian push-button study with fellow TURF researchers Jason and Liam, Matthew also worked with faculty advisors Sirisha Kothuri and Nathan McNeil to conduct a scan of existing pedestrian count programs across the nation. He identified 54 unique agencies that have published information online pertaining to their conducted pedestrian counts, with permanent counters and short-duration manual counts as the two most prevalent methods. The primary goals of this project are to understand the current state of pedestrian data collection across the nation and identify resources agencies can use in the future to improve or implement their own programs. Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn.

Taylor Ward, Portland State University

Taylor is majoring in Community Development at Portland State University. Some of her academic interests include permaculture, sustainability, universal design, transport-oriented development, urban design, and affordable housing. Working with faculty advisors Hau Hagedorn, Tammy Lee, and John MacArthur, Taylor's primary TURF research focus was evaluating differences between Division St and Powell Blvd in SE Portland. This included making on-site visits to evaluate the functional applicability of designs, and investigating the demographics of the area to show who would be impacted by improvements to Powell/Division from an equity standpoint.

Want to stay updated on the TURF program? Fill out this interest form if you would like to be notified when TURF applications open in the future.

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're proud to announce that the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) has awarded Portland State University's ITE Student Chapter, Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (ITE-STEP), the 2022 Student Chapter Momentum Award. The award recognizes the student group for an outstanding year of accomplishments.

This year's ITE-STEP leadership made big strides in activating and energizing the student chapter. They hit the ground running after being elected, to prepare for Transportation Research Board (TRB) scholarship applications, through which they leveraged UTC funding from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities to send ten PSU students to attend the TRB annual meeting in Washington, D.C. 

"The award shows the dedication and commitment that the ITE-STEP board provided. Despite having full-time academic schedules, internships and jobs, and COVID-19 issues, the board stayed committed to holding frequent online and in person events," said Nick Meusch, vice president of events for the group. 

ITE-STEP's activities for the 2021-22 academic year included regular meetings, educational opportunities and technical tours, along with game nights and social events. They established a guest speaker series to hear from professionals working in public agencies and private firms, and organized a transportation advocacy forum in which they met with nonprofit The Street Trust to discuss achieving equity goals. As part of the speaker series, ITE-STEP hosted professionals from Kittelson & Associates for an invited presentation on the firm's 4th Ave Improvement Project, and met virtually with representatives Elcon Associates and King County Metro to discuss overhead contact systems for light rail, streetcar, and electric trolleybus.

Students also partnered with PSU’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) in hosting a Transportation Equity Book Club over the Fall and Winter terms, in which they read Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance by Adonia Lugo and discussed how to address the author's call to action for environmental justice in active transportation.

The 2021-22 STEP student leaders were Cameron Bennett (President), Asif Haque (VP of Finance & Conferences ), Nick Meusch (VP of Events), and Christian Galiza (VP of Communications). Cameron and Christian are civil engineering students while Asif and Nick are in the urban planning program, reflecting ITE-STEP's commitment to engaging transportation professionals across disciplines.

"I'm proud that we got more planners involved in ITE-STEP and ITE. I think having a board split between planning and engineering programs really helped with this," Nick said.

The current ITE-STEP leadership board took steps to ensure the group will continue to thrive from one graduating class to another, and has built a collaborative operations manual for the club in order to streamline transitions to future leadership and allow for the accumulation of knowledge and best practice. Cameron and Christian are continuing on the board into the new academic year, alongside new members Owen Christofferson and Megan Lee.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) annual awards program seeks to honor outstanding achievements in transportation and distinguished service. These awards bestow international recognition upon the recipients and increase the public’s awareness of the roles and responsibilities of transportation professionals and the impacts their work has on the communities they serve.

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.

Cross-posted from Oregon State University

Research by the Oregon State University College of Engineering and Portland State University suggests a trio of roadway treatments would enable people age 65 and older to travel on foot more safely.

The research findings are important because older pedestrians are among the most likely to be killed in traffic accidents, according to the National Safety Council. In the United States in 2020 there were 709 pedestrian fatalities in the 65-74 age group – 20% of total road-user deaths in that age bracket. The project used data from Oregon collisions but is likely applicable in other areas, and it provides a framework for jurisdictions to develop their own safety recommendations, said David Hurwitz of the OSU College of Engineering.

Findings of the study led by Chris Monsere of Portland State were published in the Transportation Research Record in May 2022, "Systemic Opportunities to Improve Older Pedestrian Safety: Merging Crash Data Analysis and a Stakeholder Workshop".

Hurwitz and Monsere, whose collaborative background includes a recent update of the Safety Investigation Manual for the Oregon Department of Transportation, combed four years of Oregon crash data for locations where older pedestrians were over-represented.

“Motor vehicle crashes involving older pedestrians are more likely to result in fatality than those involving other age groups,” said Hurwitz, a transportation engineering researcher at OSU. “As a group older pedestrians are more frail, walk more slowly and are at increased risk of falling while walking. And some of those people may also have an inhibited ability to make safe road crossing decisions due to vision or hearing impairments and cognitive decline.”

After conducting a review of best practices from national and local sources, the researchers mapped those practices to the Oregon danger spots for pedestrians 65 and over and came up with the following recommendations:

• Improve visibility and illumination.
• Increase the use of left-turn traffic signals.
• Shorten crossing distances.

“Twenty percent of the crashes we looked at happened in the dark at places with limited street lighting,” Hurwitz said. “Eight percent occurred at dawn and 5% at dusk, times of day when ambient lighting is low. Better lighting at intersections and near crossing locations, rapid flashing beacons and other devices like ‘Pedestrian Crossing’ warning signs with flashing LEDs would likely help a lot.”

So would, he added, converting “permissive” left turns for drivers at certain locations into “protected” ones. Executing a permissive left turn at an intersection means watching for a break in the oncoming traffic, which has the right of way. In a protected left turn, the motorist is signaled by a green arrow that it’s safe to turn.

“In a permissive left turn, drivers can become so focused on looking for a gap in the traffic that they don’t see pedestrians,” Hurwitz said. “Increasing the use of protected left turns in locations where a permitted turn may be difficult can improve the safety of older drivers as well as pedestrians because it reduces one of the more complex driving tasks.”

He also notes that some cities including Portland and New York have been using “slow turn wedges” and “hardened center lines” as a way to enhance pedestrian safety by forcing left-turning vehicles to slow down and take a proper route.

A wedge, outlined by pylons in the intersection, makes drivers turn more sharply and thus not as fast. A hardened center line, constructed of bollards, accomplishes the same thing by preventing drivers from crossing the center line before they are supposed to.

The moves are countermeasures against the increased danger pedestrians of any age face from left-turning vehicles, which nationwide account for roughly 25% of all incidents involving a vehicle striking someone on foot.

Among pedestrians 65 and older, the proportion of serious-injury crashes happening when the person is in the roadway is greater than for pedestrians ages 25 to 64, which suggests shortening crossing distances increases their safety by reducing their exposure time.

That can be done through pedestrian islands in the median, curb extensions, raised crosswalks and road diets – i.e., reducing the number of car travel lanes in an area.

“From the perspective of universal design, a benefit is that treatments aimed at making older pedestrians safer enhance the safety of all pedestrians,” Hurwitz said. “Our main objective was identifying low-cost treatments that could be widely implemented, but looking at ways to address speeding may also help improve older pedestrian safety and should be a focus of future work.”

Jason Anderson and Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State also took part in the research, which was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration.

Photo courtesy of Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT)

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.

In 2019 Olivia Nell wasn't sure what she wanted to study in college. A junior in high school, she discovered a free transportation summer camp at Portland State University (PSU) for high schoolers. After seeing the behind-the-scenes workings of transportation in Portland, Oregon and meeting local professionals, she knew she wanted to pursue: engineering.

"I really enjoyed my time at the camp, and it helped me narrow down my educational interests. I am now in my third year of college at Oregon State University studying mechanical engineering, hoping to focus on renewable energy," Olivia said.

This summer she returned to the camp as a counselor to mentor the next cohort of Oregon high school students. She is one of five past students to do so.

"Three of our counselors this year were past camp students. I think that in itself speaks to the importance of this camp in drawing people to the transportation profession," said Hau Hagedorn, associate director of the Transportation Research Education Center (TREC) at PSU.

Olivia decided to return because she appreciates how the camp positively impacts students: "I wanted to be a part of a team that allows for students to explore various career journeys by traveling around a city and learning about its transportation system," she said.

Hosted by TREC at PSU since 2016, the summer camp is free and open to any Oregon student entering the 9–12 grade and is part of a larger national program funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA): the National Summer Transportation Institute (NSTI). At PSU’s 2022 camp, nineteen students met with professionals, practiced data collection and urban design, and went on daily field trips to places that aren't normally open to the public - clambering through the interior of Multnomah County's bridges, or getting behind the wheel of TriMet's indoor bus driving simulator.

Networking with Professionals

Guest lecturers come from public, private, and nonprofit organizations, and this year's lineup included the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Washington Department of Transportation, FHWA, EnviroIssues, Safe Routes Partnership, Fehr & Peers, Elcon Associates, The Street Trust, and Go By Bike. They discussed topics ranging from traffic signals to road design, potential career paths, and the intersection of transportation with social and racial equity. Students also had the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with transportation professionals in a career panel and speed networking session.

Introducing Transportation Equity

"Learning about our racial biases and how they play out in our decisions is a lifelong journey, and it’s never too early to start. Giving students the space and tools to lean into this journey is powerful, and provides immense potential for creating equitable change at the individual, institutional and systemic levels as these young leaders begin their careers," said Joey Posada, equity manager at Enviroissues, who led a session on Careers in Transportation.

Many of the camp's lessons connected to themes of equity and mobility justice, communicating the potential for transportation decisions to positively or negatively impact communities. To undo past harms caused by racist policies and urban practices, future professionals need this context, and this year's cohort gave every indication that they do understand and want to build a better future.

"From my brief interactions with the students, it's clear they are aware of the relationship between race and social inequities, and they care about those issues. Covering these topics in summer camp means we are acknowledging their life experiences, and we are also validating that these inequities can be undone," said Maria Sipin, technical assistance manager at Safe Routes Partnership, who taught a session on Racial Equity & Transportation.

A Close Look at Portland's Transportation System

The camp opened on Sunday, July 31, with an orientation to introduce students and parents to the counselors and where they'd be staying. Students get a preview of the college experience, as they live for a week in PSU campus student housing. That afternoon, students enjoyed a jet boat tour of the Willamette River. One student wanted to know, what that had to do with transportation?

"Rivers are vital to Indigenous communities, and serve as important economic ports today. We saw where grain, potash and various commodities are shipped abroad," Hagedorn said in a tweet.

The next day, NSTI got fully underway with classroom sessions in the morning, and an afternoon Multnomah County bridge tour. Students were assigned to work in groups to solve real-world transportation problems, and throughout the week were given the chance to apply what they learned to their group projects.

Other highlights from the week include a trip to the Columbia River Gorge, a tour of TriMet Operations Headquarters, and a ride on the Portland aerial tram following a tour of Go By Bike PDX, the bike valet facility at Oregon Health and Science University. Evening activities at PSU included scavenger hunts, rock climbing, and building bridges out of popsicle sticks to see how much weight they could support. See photos of the 2022 summer transportation camp at PSU here.

Sharing Their Solutions to Real-World Problems

On Friday, the last day of camp, students presented their impressive group projects to their families and the camp instructors.

Group One: SW 4th Avenue from SW Lincoln St to SW Harrison St.

One group tackled a stretch of southwest 4th Avenue from Lincoln to Harrison street, an area that PBOT is currently in the process of redesigning. The students addressed issues such as lack of sidewalk space and the need for facilities like trash cans, water fountains, shade, and seating for pedestrians. They proposed repainting parking zones, improving the bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and adding street furniture to make the area feel safer and more welcoming for all road users.

Group Two: The Saint's Row Superblock

The second group of students made pedestrian improvements to a "superblock" in downtown Portland, a complex of buildings connected by narrow walkways, without through streets, in an area roughly nine times the size of a typical Portland city block. Their design was aimed at making the space easier to traverse for people walking and biking.

Group Three: SW 4th Avenue from Harrison to Market Street

The challenge issued to this group was to make this block, which currently has three lanes of one-way traffic with parking lanes on both sides, a more welcoming area for active transportation users. They designed the street to move away from the car-centered design, focusing on improving the pedestrian and cycling environment.

While the hope is to inspire students to pursue careers in transportation, it’s just as valuable for them to leave the camp with an enthusiasm and interest in how communities can be connected safely and efficiently in their city and beyond.

On the last day of camp a student shared, “I have a newfound appreciation for the city and the different modes of transport that are accessible to people.”

Interested in next year's summer transportation camp at PSU? Sign up here to be notified when applications open.

The camp was funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), and hosted by Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC). 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.