Through our program the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), we've kickstarted the latest round of our Pooled Fund Grant 2018 (Problem Statements due May 15, 2018) – an opportunity for agencies and other partners to join forces in addressing a pressing transportation issue.

WEBINAR VIDEO

SLIDES

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One champion identifies a problem that is common to other agencies, cities, or MPOs and then recruits other partners who are willing to collaborate and contribute financially to the project. At this point, NITC steps in and matches the funds that the partners pooled – making it possible to pursue a question that is greater in scope than any one agency or city could pursue on its own. Simple process, right? Maybe not! Yet, this process can be exciting, empowering and, most importantly, lead to the implementation of a project that produces immediate and impactful outcomes.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Understand the process behind the grant,
• Receive guidance on how to identify and package a transportation issue into a compelling problem statement,
• Learn how to entice potential partners to collaborate and contribute,
• Learn how to construct a competitive pooled fund grant application.

Along the way, we will offer insights from two NITC projects that are the result of a Pooled Fund Grant, as well as provide additional guidance and resources. Join us!

SPEAKER

Eva-Maria Muecke

Research Program Administrator, Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC)

Eva-Maria administers NITC's research program at TREC, which involves a range of responsibilities including guiding projects through their life cycle, managing RFPs and peer reviews, compiling performance data for projects and NITC, and generating reports for NITC’s funder, U.S. DOT. She learned about the power of data, interdisciplinary research, and pursuing multiple lines of inquiry in solving problems through her graduate work in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior, research, and more than 10 years of teaching experience. She holds a Ph.D. from Michigan State University and is passionate about all that supports a sustainable future, including transportation research. She has been riding a bike since she was a midget, and is happy to get to ride a bike to work again (at least part of the way) after several years of hiatus.

A recording of this webinar will be posted to the Pooled Fund Grant page.

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This presentation will review research regarding the economic impact of bicycle infrastructure on local businesses. Three case study corridors in San Francisco, CA are examined, and a robust discussion of the shortcomings of the research will be included. A question and open discussion period will follow, with a focus on constructive criticism of past research and methods to improve future work.

SEMINAR VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

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SPEAKER

Joseph Poirier believes improving transportation is the most important part of fighting climate change. Joe has more than four years of experience in the transportation planning advocacy and academic worlds, and years more working freight logistics in the lumber industry. Joe specializes in active transportation and transit station area planning. His approach is to create efficient, equitable, and welcoming transportation systems to produce cleaner, happier, healthier communities.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar is eligible for 1 hour of professional development credit for AICP (see our provider summary). We can provide an electronic attendance certificate for other types of certification maintenance.

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SEMINAR VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss the presentation or want a look back at the slides? You can view them here.

How can we go one step, or one lane, further than the standard road diet? Roundabouts allow a road diet to reduce the final number of lanes from three to two. 

Questions arise when roundabouts are used with a road diet. What traffic volumes are supportable? Will the roundabouts fit within existing intersections? What does current guidance tell us about this approach? 

Michael Williams will present his work on creating a sequel to FHWA’s Road Diet Informational Guide. This work is intended to provide a feasibility determination tool for the application of this approach to existing corridors. Data from Bird Rock Boulevard in La Jolla, CA is presented as an example from which important lessons are drawn.

FHWA's "Road Diet Informational Guide: Download the report (PDF) / Access the 508 version here

Michael Williams' Road Diet V2.0 Informational Guide: Download the report

THE SPEAKER

Michael Williams has worked on active transportation issues since 2000 as an advocate, planner, and designer. He has published and presented on advisory bicycle lanes and the use of roundabouts with road diets. Michael Williams holds a BS in Computer Engineering, an MS in Electrical Engineering, an MS in Civil Engineering and holds 11 patents. More information available at @bikepedx or www.advisorybikelanes.com.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar is eligible for 1 hour of professional development credit for AICP (see our provider summary). We can provide an electronic attendance certificate for other types of certification maintenance.

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This one-day summit is co-hosted in partnership with Portland State University’s Graduate School of Education (GSE)

Learn about the latest approaches and technologies to access transportation systems for diverse members of our community, especially people with visual impairments. With effective wayfinding technologies and community partnerships, innovations support all people in accessing transportation and connecting with the community. Learn more from our experts on travel planning, wayfinding, and designing systems that support access for all people.

After this workshop you will be able to:

• Describe recent innovations that support wayfinding and travel for individuals with visual impairments
• Identify important considerations in community design that include individuals with visual impairments and other disabilities
• Identify innovations in universal transportation design
• Share conversations that lead to solutions for wayfinding and access
• Contribute to a shared blueprint for community-based solutions to transportation

Registration Costs

Includes light breakfast, breaks, and lunch
General Admission (Early Bird - ends Feb 1): $75
General Admission (Regular - Feb 2 - March 3): $100
Discounted Admission for PSU Students: $25

See the program and register here (closes March 3rd)!

Ramp-Up Event

Want to learn more before the summit? Join us January 25th for a free webinar on "An Accessible Approach to Shared Streets" to hear from the teams who produced the recently published FHWA guide to "Accessible Shared Streets: Notable Practices and Considerations for Accommodating Pedestrians with Vision Disabilities".

Summit Partners

Portland State University Graduate School of Education (GSE) is the largest and most comprehensive school of education in Oregon, offering more than 50 programs in education and counseling. GSE’s hybrid online O&M is the regional program for the Pacific and Northwest Consortium for Vision Education, comprised of six states: Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Idaho, Alaska and Montana. The O&M program is closely affiliated with the GSE’s nationally accredited Visually Impaired Learner (VIL) program.

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

VIDEO

View the presentation slides here.

This project builds on the success of NITC’s first Pooled Fund project that created the first national bicycle and pedestrian traffic count archive, named BikePed Portal. The next step for BikePed Portal is to improve its usability for both data providers and data users, specifically transportation professionals. To improve usability, area transportation planners will be invited to participate in an idea gathering session to help design an “Explore Data Page.” The purpose of this page is to allow transportation planners (data users) ready access to the non-motorized count data available in BikePed Portal in a way that is useful and attractive to them. The page may include graphical displays (maps, graphs, etc.) and/or summary statistics. The work also includes other usability improvements including data quality communication improvements, user interface improvements for data providers, maintenance, adding data to the archive, software testing, spreading the word to potential data users, and inclusion of National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project (NBPDP) data.

Pooled Fund Grant 2018: Did you know that the BikePed Portal was created through the process of a "pooled fund grant"? Partnering agencies came together to develop a problem statement, raise funds, and submitted it to our NITC program – through which we matched the raised funds to tackle this transportation need. Learn more about our current third round of the Pooled Fund Grant here (Problem Statements from agencies are due May 15th).

SPEAKERS

Hau Hagedorn is the Interim Director of TREC at Portland State University and manages several large research programs, including the National Institute of Transportation and Communities (NITC) and the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI). Through IBPI, Hau coordinates workshops that help provide training to practicing bicycle-pedestrian professionals and more recently training university faculty on integrating bicycle and pedestrian topics into their curriculum.

Dr. Sirisha Kothuri is a research associate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Portland State University. Her research interests are in the areas of multimodal traffic operations and signal timing, pedestrian and bicycle counting, performance measurement and safety. She currently serves as the research co-chair of TRB’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Data subcommittee and is also a member of TRB’s Standing Committee on Pedestrians and Traffic Signal Systems.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
This 60-minute webinar is eligible for 1 hour of professional development credit for AICP (see our provider summary). We can provide an electronic attendance certificate for other types of certification maintenance.

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VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss the presentation, or want a look back at the slides? You can view them here.

Although Germany may be known internationally for its environmentalism, over the past 20 years German cities have chronically underinvested in transportation networks, both for public transport as well as non-motorized options. The lag in the development and expansion of sustainable options combined with the rapid growth in private automobile ownership (itself the result of automobile-industry-friendly policymaking) means that cities like Bremen have been left behind in terms of transportation planning. As in America, SUV sales continue to increase despite considerably narrower streets, particularly in cities. 

Nowhere is this more visible than in Bremen’s Neustadt, a dense neighbourhood with the most children under ten years old, per capita, of any neighborhood in the state. Motorized traffic, much of it commuter traffic and deliveries, continues to increase with a resulting increase in noise and air pollution. Bremen’s elected officials and transport authorities are actively resisting parking controls, pedestrian crossings, traffic calming measures, measures to ensure safe routes to school, and lower speed limits; seemingly because of fear of losing votes.

Increasingly concerned neighbors are working on speed limits for a residential street. So far two official applications for a speed limit reduction from 50 Km/h (32 miles per hour) to 30 (approximately 19 mph) have been denied. A petition gathering signatures has also been denied, supposedly because there is no evidence to prove the benefits of reduced speeds, although the federal government’s own studies have shown this over and over.  Our current project is for parking management and control, for example stopping cars parked illegally on sidewalks; public reception has been mixed but an open discussion is happening.

The question remains as to how citizens can actually influence and steer transportation politics in order to create real, sustainable change. 

SPEAKER

Anne Kirkham, University of Bremen

Anne Kirkham has been a passionate cyclist since 1994, participating in the early days of Critical Mass and the bicycle activism in California and Washington State and working as a bike messenger, bicycle and environmental activist, as well as a brief stint as a cyclocross racer. In addition to being active in the globalization movement, she has taught womens’ self-defense and is a henna artist who loves cultural exchange and especially sharing music, food, and art with friends from around the world. Anne has her master’s degree in Political Science, focusing on theories of social and environmental justice, and is currently researching the social justice aspects of transportation in Germany for her dissertation in transportation politics.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

This 60-minute seminar is eligible for 1 hour of professional development credit for AICP (see our provider summary). We can provide an electronic attendance certificate for other types of certification maintenance.

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Sign up for our newsletter and check the box for "Events" to receive monthly updates.

VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss the presentation or want a look back at the slides? You can view them here.

SEMINAR OVERVIEW

Walkability and walking are being intensively researched today and the literature provides a wealth of references and examples on how to measure walkability of the built environment. IAAPE is one method that was developed at the Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon) to measure walkability at the micro-scale, bringing solutions that were disregarded in two aspects: it is a participatory process; and it provides different evaluations for different population segments (adults, children, seniors, impaired) or for different trip motivations.

We will present insights of the walkability and walking in Lisbon which is our case study that will be presented. Recently, a number of interventions have been made in the built environment to make it more walkable and we present our assessment results out coming from IAAPE, comparing the before and after.

We also provide evidence on validation of the method both with pedestrian counting (under the assumption that more walkability would imply more pedestrians walking) and with on-street surveying, in order to compare respondents' judgement on how they perceive the walkability of their walking environment and the walkability scores we obtain from IAAPE. Finally, we present a brief comparison of our method with other approaches and present the challenges we are trying to resolve now and the near future.

THE SPEAKER

Filipe Moura is an Assistant Professor of Transportation Systems in the Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Georesources at the Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal. He was awarded the Fulbright grant in 2017/2018 and is a visiting researcher at the Portland State University, where he is currently doing research on "Urban mobility, actives modes and travel behaviour changes". His other research interests also focus on "sustainable mobility" and "technology diffusion in transport systems". He is an expert of the European Commission (INEA) for the Smart Cities and Communities projects. Filipe holds a PhD in Transportation Systems from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon, having developed part of his research at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxemburg, Austria.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar is eligible for 1 hour of professional development credit for AICP (see our provider summary). We can provide an electronic attendance certificate for other types of certification maintenance.

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Sign up for our newsletter and check the box for "Events" to receive monthly updates.

VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss the presentation or want a look back at the slides? You can view them here.

Development of origin-destination demand matrices is crucial for transit planning. The development process is facilitated by transit automated data, making it possible to mine boarding and alighting patterns on an individual basis. This research proposes a novel stochastic trip chaining method which uses Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) and General Transit Feed Specifications (GTFS) data to infer an origin-destination (O-D) matrix.

The proposed method generates a set of candidate trajectories for each AFC tag to reach the next tag, calculates the probability of each trajectory, and selects the most likely trajectory to infer the boarding and alighting stops. The method is applied to transit data from the Twin Cities, MN, which has an open transit system where passengers tap smart cards only once when boarding (or when alighting on pay-exit buses). The method is compared to previous methods and shows improvement in the number of inferred cases.

Inferred boarding and alighting results are used to develop a demand matrix and are visualized to study route ridership and geographical pattern of trips. On the individual level, travel habits of users from multiple days is studied to develop users clusters with similar regularity patterns.

SPEAKER

Alireza Khani is an assistant professor in the department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- engineering at the University of Minnesota. His research includes transportation network and user behavior modeling with application to transit planning and operations. Transit demand and ridership forecasting, reliability analysis, route choice, and network design are some of the applications of his research. His research on transit systems has been supported by National Science Foundation and transportation agencies such as Minnesota DOT and Metro Transit. Alireza Khani received PhD degree in civil engineering from the University of Arizona. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, he was a research associate at Network Modeling Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar is eligible for 1 hour of professional development credit for AICP (see our provider summary). We can provide an electronic attendance certificate for other types of certification maintenance.

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Sign up for our newsletter and check the box for "Events" to receive monthly updates.

VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss the presentation or want a look back at the slides? You can view them here.

Planning for affordable housing is challenged by development policies that often do not differentiate between the travel patterns of residents of market-rate housing and those living in affordable units. The development review process generally requires an evaluation of the anticipated additional transportation demand that new development places on the system and an assessment of fees or improvements to mitigate these impacts.

However, industry standard guidelines for assessment of travel demand outlined within the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Handbook have been focused solely on vehicle trip rates for these traffic impact analyses. Given the public goals of providing affordable housing in areas with good accessibility and transportation options, there is a need to reduce unnecessary costs imposed by the potential over-estimation of automobile travel and its associated impacts. During the course of this seminar, we will discuss the importance of examining the influences of urban characteristics, residential housing type, and income on metrics commonly used to assess the transportation impacts of new development.

THE SPEAKER

Amanda Howell, University of Oregon

Amanda Howell recently joined the University of Oregon as the Program Coordinator for Urbanism Next after completing a master's degree in urban and regional planning at Portland State University in 2017. She served as the project manager for an affordable housing transportation study sponsored by the California Department of Transportation during her studies. Growing up in Los Angeles heavily influenced her interest in the built environment, as well as the intersection between housing and transportation. Before moving to Portland for graduate school, Amanda provided programmatic support to the Prison University Project, a Bay Area nonprofit that operates an on-site, degree-granting program for people incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar is eligible for 1 hour of professional development credit for AICP (see our provider summary). We can provide an electronic attendance certificate for other types of certification maintenance.

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Sign up for our newsletter and check the box for "Events" to receive monthly updates.

Hosted at Portland State University since 2016, our week-long summer camp is free and open to any Oregon student entering the 9–12 grade. It offers an immersive introduction to transportation careers and the workings of transportation systems in Portland. Students will hear from guest speakers, develop data collection and STEM skills, and go on daily field trips. 

Read more about the summer camp. | Apply Now