National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs

John MacArthur, Nathan McNeil and Joseph Broach, Portland State University

• Download the ten technical briefs (PDF)
• Register for the September 16, 2020 webinar

Last year, Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) released a 130 page evaluation comparing equity-oriented programs from over 70 U.S. bike share systems across the U.S. Bike share being a relative newcomer to the transportation system, the research team was not surprised to find that approaches to equity programs ranged widely. In the latest installment, funded by the Better Bike Share Partnership and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, the research team synthesized these findings into a series of ten 2-page briefs highlighting best practices and lessons learned in bike share equity policies, data collection, metrics, marketing, and more.

• Learn more in a free webinar September 16, 2020: A National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Lead researcher Nathan McNeil shares further, "We set out to document the current state of equity programming for bike share systems in the U.S., and in the process create a road map for cities and operators navigating questions of equity. We wanted to make this information quick and easily accessible for them in these briefs. Important decisions and conversations around equity are happening now, that could have impacts for years to come on bike share systems.”

Across the U.S. there is a nationwide call for centering equity in all industries, and bike share is no exception. As some cities and companies are seeing significant drops in ridership during the global pandemic, it calls into question - can they afford investments in equity programming?

“One of the core questions we need to be asking is whether bike share is meant to serve the community or the companies? Is this a public good and worthy of municipal investment?” asks McNeil. “Bike share systems offer a flexible mobility option for people who stand to gain the most from more options. One of the potential benefits of a bike share system that centers equity along with some form of municipal support is that it can probably be more resilient in riding out the broader economic ups and downs rather than being at the mercy of venture capitalism.” 

Laying the foundation for a bike share program starts with articulating a specific equity policy to establish goals, build in accountability, and provide an opportunity to assess. Asking questions like, “Who currently is excluded from the benefits of bike share?” and “What past injustices and current circumstances necessitate current action?” will shape how operators, agency staff, and partners make decisions as well as who is at the table making those decisions for the community.

The two-page briefs are intended as a resource for bike share professionals and community partners. They highlight key findings and offer simple, effective guidance on how to get the most effective and meaningful results from equity programming.

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

Learn more about Jaime Orrego-Oñate: Follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn

Jaime Orrego-Oñate, a civil engineering PhD candidate at Portland State University (PSU), has been awarded a $15,000 Oregon Sylff Fellowship for International Research. As a Chilean national completing a Ph.D. in transportation engineering at PSU, Jaime is poised to promote the expansion of American research abroad into countries that lack research resources. His research focuses on understanding the role of the urban form in active transportation decisions. With his work, he hopes to address an information gap between pedestrians’ motivations to walk and how urban planners can encourage this behavior. This is of particular importance in the context of Jaime's home region, Latin America, where walking has been decreasing due to the rise of use of private automobiles.

"I want to spearhead positive change by convincing societies like mine that they can improve urban development," Orrego-Oñate said.

The Sylff program aims to identify and nurture leaders who will overcome differences in nationality, language, ethnicity, religion, and political systems to tackle global issues, and whose high integrity and drive to address issues unique to their respective countries can make a real difference. Fellowship stipends are awarded to full-time doctoral students for one academic year of graduate work involving research and scholarly endeavors in programs and projects with an international dimension.

As a doctoral student in active transportation planning at PSU, Jaime works with Dr. Kelly Clifton as part of the SUPER Lab team, an interdisciplinary group that conducts research on the links between human behavior, technology, and the built, social, and natural environment. As part of his doctoral research, he intends to propose a new contextual characterization of the built environment. There is consensus that environmental factors, such as the built environment, influence mode choice. However, there is still contradictory evidence about how much. Jaime's doctoral work in this area can add much-needed clarity to that discussion by providing a deep analysis of contextual conditions that would make the association between the built environment and walking easier to interpret.

Working with SUPER lab, Jaime has contributed to the expansion of pedestrian modeling tools beyond the Portland region by helping to develop guidelines for context-sensitive pedestrian modeling. He also presented a poster at the 2020 TRB annual meeting, "Nonlinearities In The Relationship Between The Built Environment And Metropolitan Structure With Automobile And Walking Modal Share."

In his time at Portland State, Jaime has taken an active role in both research and policy deliberation. He first began taking note of the lack of scientific evidence in policymaking during his undergraduate years in Santiago, Chile, when a new transit system was implemented in the city – and soon thereafter, failed completely. Prior to the transit system failure, the faculty at his university had warned the government that the proposed system had poor foundations. To gain a firsthand perspective on policymaking in the United States, he joined the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) Central City in Motion Working Group, a team charged with ensuring the successful implementation of Central City in Motion projects. The group aims to review transportation projects in central Portland and ultimately reduce automobile dependency. Learning about policy implementation in the field will assist him, he believes, in taking an active role in policy reform.

Jaime's instructors describe him as "a passionate leader in the transportation engineering field" and someone who shows a lot of commitment: spending time explaining and helping students as a teaching assistant, and devoting time to interdisciplinary methods and data analysis as a research assistant. He is also a passionate advocate for pedestrians and cyclists.

"I specifically aim to focus on cities outside of the United States and North America, thus expanding the influence and scope of available transportation research. As a Chilean citizen, I want to direct my research towards Latin America and bring my region to the global stage while also using the practical application of my research to affect positive change," Orrego-Oñate said.

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

Photo by Pav_1007 on iStock

Evidence from Urban Roads without Bicycle Lanes on the Impact of Bicycle Traffic on Passenger Car Travel Speeds

Jaclyn Schaefer, Miguel Figliozzi, and Avinash Unnikrishnan; Portland State University

The new article Evidence from Urban Roads without Bicycle Lanes on the Impact of Bicycle Traffic on Passenger Car Travel Speeds published in Transportation Research Record, the Journal of the Transportation Research Board, demonstrates that bicycles do not significantly reduce passenger car travel speeds on low speed, low volume urban roads without bicycle lanes. Authored by Jaclyn Schaefer, Miguel Figliozzi, and Avinash Unnikrishnan of Portland State University, the research shows that differences in vehicle speeds with and without cyclists were generally on the order of 1 mph or less – negligible from a practical perspective.

A concern raised by some motorists is that, on urban roads without bicycle lanes, cyclists will slow down motorized vehicles and therefore create congestion. Researchers evaluated speeds on six roads in Portland at different times of day, including peak traffic hours. They did a detailed comparative analysis of the travel speeds of passenger cars on lower volume urban roads without bicycle lanes, and found that a 1 mph differential in speed caused by the presence of a cyclist would not cause congestion.

The study also found that cyclists riding on a downhill road, and therefore traveling faster, were less likely to be overtaken by motorists. In a Forbes article on the research, "Cyclists Don’t Cause Congestion: ‘Must Get In Front’ Maneuvers By Motorists Pointless, Finds Study," Figliozzi agreed that this has possible implications for e-bike riders, who can often travel at faster average speeds than cyclists on standard bicycles.

"[Those on] e-bikes are not as affected by uphills, and have better travel performance regarding speed and acceleration. In a low volume and low-speed street, motorists are less likely to overtake e-bikes because the speed differential is smaller or maybe zero," Figliozzi told Forbes.

This research was first presented by Jaclyn Schaefer at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, and you can view that poster visualization of the research here. Jaclyn is a recent Eisenhower Fellow and NITC Scholar, and is currently wrapping up her studies as a master's student at Portland State University.

“The hope is that our study dissuades policymakers from tossing out shared roadways as a viable option because of the perception that bicyclists will impede the mobility and speed of drivers,” Schaefer shared.  “While the preference is to separate modes through separated, protected bike lanes - that’s not always possible in every urban setting. ‘Bike boulevards’, or ‘neighborhood greenways’ as we call them here in Portland, are great alternatives on low-volume, low-speed roads to build out a safe, well-connected bicycle network.”

The research team builds on a long legacy of Portland State University research on the case for bike boulevards, as recapped recently by PSU Urban Studies Professor and TREC Director Jennifer Dill.

Due to limitations regarding homogeneity among some site characteristics, this study is currently being expanded to include a large number of sites displaying a more diverse range of functional classifications, roadway markings, speed limits, roadway grades, and traffic volumes and compositions. Additionally, the new study will explore how oncoming traffic speed and volume may affect opportunities for overtaking bicycles, and the potential connection to passenger car speeds on roads without bicycle lanes.

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

Authored by Mike McQueen and John MacArthur, Portland State University

• Read the 2020 research paper in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment with updated model & findings.
• Use the online Electric Vehicle Incentive Cost and Impact Tool

Electric bikes (e-bikes) are quickly becoming common in U.S. cities and suburbs, but we still have a ways to go compared to our neighbors across the Atlantic.  In recent years, e-bike sales have steadily increased with unprecedented growth in Europe, especially in the Netherlands. Can the U.S. catch up? E-bikes offer a cheaper alternative to car travel and also provide physical activity. Riders with limited physical ability find that e-bikes extend their overall mobility. Beyond the practical, e-bikes are also just fun to ride. In fact, e-bikes encourage users to cycle farther and more often than conventional bicycles. More importantly to local and regional U.S. governments, e-bikes could be a useful tool to address our current climate crisis by reducing transportation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Related research: MacArthur and McQueen are also working with the National Science Foundation to collect e-bike user data via onboard technology. To learn more or participate in that study, visit the Mobility By E-Bike Project.

E-bike incentive programs in the U.S. remain relatively small in scale. Currently, California and Oregon offer statewide incentive programs that provide rebates towards the purchase of battery electric vehicles (BEV), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). These programs are intended to reduce state GHG emissions from the transportation system. Could incentivizing e-bikes also be a cost-effective way for regions to reach their greenhouse gas emission reduction goals?

Today the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University launches a new Electric Vehicle Incentive Cost and Impact Tool. This online tool enables policymakers, public stakeholders, and advocates to quickly visualize the potential outcomes of an electric vehicle incentive program made up of several vehicle types. The tool estimates the cost efficiency of a proposed program in terms of the cost per kg CO2 avoided by each mode over the course of one year. It also takes the proposed budget into consideration to calculate the potential number of incentives to be made available and the amount of total CO2 that would be avoided due to internal combustion engine automobile (ICE) VMT displacement.

To show you how it works, we tried out the tool with Oregon as a case study. Currently, the state sets aside about $12M per year for its Oregon Clean Vehicle Rebate Program, with rebates usually offered at $2,500 each for BEV and PHEV vehicles with battery capacity of 10 kWh or more and $1,500 for vehicles with batteries with less than 10 kWh. How do BEVs, PHEVs, and e-bikes compare in terms of incentive program cost efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions avoided?

USING THE EV INCENTIVE COST AND IMPACT TOOL: AN OREGON CASE STUDY

Creating your EV Incentive Program

First, let’s get the tool set up with information for the state of Oregon. We’ve designed the tool with all of the data you need, and you simply choose the presets for your scenario. It’s also easy to use your own data by just entering it directly into the tool. Apply presets with information for the electricity generation emissions profile from the US EPA eGRID, average car travel information from the NHTS, and national ICE fuel efficiency information from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

 [[{"fid":"4916","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"19":{"format":"default"}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-default","data-delta":"19"}}]]

Next, apply some information about the vehicles you’re looking to incentivize. Again, we’ll just use presets that we’ve created: 

• The E-Bike preset is an average of the fuel economies of several e-bike models studied in a recent paper by Efficiency Vermont. It may be unreasonable to expect most people to completely replace all of their automobile VMT with an e-bike. To account for this, we specify that the average user will only replace 15% of their VMT with their incentivized e-bike. 

• The BEV preset is a weighted average of fuel economies provided by the US EPA of the current BEV fleet in Oregon. 

• Similarly, the PHEV preset is a weighted average of fuel economies provided by the US EPA of the current PHEV fleet in Oregon. Fleet information was obtained from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) based on historical rebate distribution within the state.

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Lastly, we can set our incentive amounts and total budget. We can also choose how to distribute our budget among the vehicles we’re incentivizing. Let’s set the BEV and PHEV incentive to $2,500 and the total budget to $12M, similar to Oregon’s current program. We’ll try out an e-bike incentive of $350, and for this example we’ll split the budget evenly among each vehicle type.

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Once you’re all done creating your incentive program scenario, you can export a report for quick reference when discussing options with other stakeholders.

Review the Results: What did we find in Oregon?

First off, we get some information about incentive cost efficiency. It turns out that the e-bike incentive is more cost efficient, in terms of cost per kg CO2 saved, than both the BEV and PHEV incentives.

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Next, we can look at the total number of incentives our program is able to provide. Because the e-bike incentive is much lower in price, the program is able to impact almost 10 times as many people’s lives with a new e-vehicle compared to the BEV or PHEV incentives given our $12M budget.

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Lastly, let’s look at the GHG impacts of our program over the course of 1 year. The program is able to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions of one year by about 25M kg thanks to the incentive program we designed. Given how we’ve structured this incentive program, e-bikes make up the largest portion of this CO2 savings, about 40% of the entire impact.

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“What-if” Scenarios for E-bike Incentive Amounts

Let’s do a quick set of “what-if” scenarios to see how changing the e-bike incentive from $350 impacts the results.

What if the e-bike incentive was $150?

What we found for a $150 e-bike incentive (versus $350):

• The cost per kg of CO2 saved has decreased, from $0.40 to $0.17.
• The number of e-bike incentives we can offer has more than doubled, from 11,314 to 26,400.
• Similarly, the amount of CO2 avoided due to e-bikes has also more than doubled, from 10.2M kg to 23.9M kg. This accounts for 61% of the total CO2 savings in this case.

What if the e-bike incentive was $500?

What we found for a $500 e-bike incentive (versus $350):

• The cost per kg CO2 saved has gone up from our initial case study, from $0.40 to $0.55 per kg CO2 saved. However, this is on par with the cost efficiency of the PHEV incentive.
• The number of e-bike incentives that can be offered has decreased, from 11,314 to 7,920. However, we’re still able to offer more incentives than the BEV and PHEV incentives combined.
• Lastly, the total CO2 saved has also declined, from 10.2M kg to 7.2M kg, although it is still on par with the BEV and PHEV categories.

Final Thoughts

This case study has shown that e-bikes could be a strong player as part of a CO2 avoidance e-vehicle incentive program. In some cases, e-bikes could perform better than electric vehicles in terms of cost efficiency, number of incentives provided, and total CO2 saved.

The Electric Vehicle Incentive Cost and Impact Tool is available online, and is able to generate a downloadable report for sharing purposes.

Contact John MacArthur (macarthur[at]pdx.edu) with any questions or comments about the tool, and let us know how you used it!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John MacArthur

Sustainable Transportation Program Manager

John MacArthur is the Principal Investigator for TREC's electric bicycle research initiatives. His research also includes low-/no-emission vehicle infrastructure in Portland metro, as well as a climate change impact assessment for surface transportation in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Before joining the TREC staff, John was the Context Sensitive and Sustainable Solutions Program Manager for the Oregon Department of Transportation’s OTIA III State Bridge Delivery Program.

Mike McQueen

Graduate Research Assistant

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

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

Kate Wihtol is a 2019 graduate of the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program at PSU. As of 2020 she is an associate planner at the Oregon Department of Transportation. Kate worked with fellow MURP students of the Living Streets project team to develop a pathway toward inclusive, equitable, and accessible pedestrian streets for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. In this video she talks about their work to identify best practices and recommendations tailored to Portland’s urban context: a city built for cars, but aspiring and progressing toward a more walkable, bikeable, and transit-friendly future.

Watch the interview with Kate.

Photo by cybrain, iStock

NSF SCC RAPID: Consumer Responses to Household Provisioning During COVID-19 Crisis and Recovery

Kelly Clifton, Portland State University; Rebecca Lewis, University of Oregon

• Watch a video interview with Kelly Clifton, published Thursday, June 11 from KATU: PSU and UO researchers study how coronavirus pandemic is impacting consumers

This article was authored by Katy Swordfisk and cross-posted from Portland State University.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed people’s relationships with the outside world. Researchers from Portland State University and the University of Oregon have received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how shopping strategies have changed as consumers quickly become more reliant on e-commerce to access basic resources. The $168,914 grant comes from the NSF’s RAPID program, designed to study phenomena that require more immediate understanding.

“People have changed their relationship with their local stores and how they engage and shop,” said Kelly Clifton, principal investigator and PSU professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “To the extent they can, people have started to explore online options.”

But access to online shopping necessitated by the pandemic is inequitable. Many vulnerable communities are more transit-dependent or have limited access to online technology.

To better understand these different relationships, the collaborative study will reach across disciplines. 

“While the smart cities and new mobility space is rich with projects that focus on personal transportation and mobility, research in the e-commerce and delivery landscape is more limited. Our study will provide rich data on perceptions and use of technology to meet basic needs during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Rebecca Lewis, co-PI and associate professor of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. 

“We will rely on our collective expertise in travel behavior, land use, and e-commerce to examine what contributes to use of technology to meet basic needs. We hope that our project will provide tangible recommendations for policy-makers about barriers and opportunities for relying on technology for household provisioning,” Lewis said.

Clifton said they are especially interested in resilience planning.

“Should we have another pandemic or earthquake or situation that impacts us, how can we think of food provision in a more robust way?” Clifton said. “How can we make sure everyone gets what they need?”

The survey will be conducted in Washington, Michigan and Florida over the next year. The first survey of 1,000 households will be conducted in June with two more surveys spread out over the next eight to 12 months. 

Clifton said the survey will emphasize reaching out to those populations that may not have a record of purchasing online, but they are also interested in hard to reach populations including the elderly, low-income or non-English speaking households.

“The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic appears to be accelerating trends that were already underway prior to the outbreak, such as the increasing adoption of e-commerce for household provisioning,” said Amanda Howell, project manager at UO's Urbanism Next center. “This NSF RAPID grant will enable us to collect critical data about the rate of technological adoption and general trends in household provisioning, as well as the barriers to access that many people face in order to identify potential interventions.”

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

Authored by Tammy Lee, Transportation Data Manager, Portland State University

Traditionally, the month of May is Bike to Work Month. Last year this time, Oregon logged 179,177 trips for a total of 1,374,835 miles by 10,397 riders. And last year this time TREC was winning the PSU bike to work month department challenge. So what are we seeing in the data now?

For continuity from the last time we posted some bike volume observations, we’re again showing data from the Hawthorne Bridge and Tilikum Crossing (Figure 1) in Portland, Oregon. At the moment, daily volume across the Hawthorne Bridge remains relatively low. Typically we’d expect bike volumes across the Hawthorne would be higher in May, especially because if this were “normal” times we’d be competing in the Bike to Work Month challenge. Bike volumes across the Tilikum show higher volumes beginning in April, especially on the weekends since the March 23, stay-at-home order was issued.

Figure 1. Daily bike volumes across Hawthorne Bridge and Tilikum Crossing. EB = eastbound; WB = westbound. The solid orange line (March 12) represents the closing of schools; the dotted orange line (March 23) represents the “stay-at-home” announcement.

Perhaps the difference in bike volume trends between the two bridges can be attributed to the type of facility and location. Hawthorne Bridge is a main thoroughfare into downtown Portland, and the Tilikum is located by OHSU and excludes vehicular access. Personally, it’s more pleasant to ride across the Tilikum, but it’s out of the way for me if I’m biking to work. If most people probably aren’t biking to work, are they biking for fitness?

Based on a brief analysis by PSU’s Dr. Jay Gopalakrishnan, one way to look at the data is to compare weekday versus weekend bike volumes. Using data from the Tilikum, we took the average 15-minute volume Monday through Friday for weekdays, and Saturday and Sunday for weekends, and compared it to pre- and post-stay-at-home. For pre-stay-at-home, we had a few years worth of data to calculate the average 15-minute bicycle volume (days with no data were excluded).

Figure 2 below shows pre-stay-at-home on the top panels, and post-stay-at-home on the bottom panels with the left panels representing average 15-minute weekday volume, and the right panels representing the average 15-minute weekend volume. What we saw:

• Pre-stay-at-home weekday there is a distinct bimodal distribution of the westbound morning commute and the eastbound evening commute.
• Pre-stay-at-home weekend there is a single afternoon bump.
• Post-stay-at-home weekday average volumes look more like the weekend.
• Post-stay at home weekends are showing higher average volumes than before.

Figure 2. Average 15-minute bicycle volumes across Tilikum Crossing pre- (before March 23) and post-stay-at-home (March 23 through May 18).

Data from Tilikum suggests that people are shifting from biking for commuting to biking for recreation and fitness. How does this compare to other places? Seattle is showing similar trends across the Folsom Bridge, and a recent survey from Cascade Bicycle Club indicated that a majority of their respondents are biking at the same rate if not more since COVID-19 crisis began.

We have also noticed a similar trend in other parts of the country. Below we have included a comparison of weekday versus weekend average 15 minute bike volume for pre- and post-stay-at-home announcements for locations in Arlington, Virginia (Figure 3); and Boulder, Colorado (Figure 4). Both locations are in areas used by commuters. And in both locations there is the bimodal morning/evening peak weekday commute pre-stay-at-home that shifts to unimodal weekend pattern. 

Figure 3. Key Bridge, Arlington, VA. Pre-stay-at-home before March 23; post-stay-at-home includes March 23 through May 18.

The Key Bridge (VA), linking Arlington to DC, shows more than double the weekend bike volume post-stay-at-home; however, the Folsom St (CO) location does not show an increase in average bike volume which may be because the detector is located near an entrance to the University of Colorado, Boulder, where in-person classes were cancelled on March 11, 2020.

Figure 4. Location of Folsom St. south of Arapahoe Ave, Boulder, CO. Pre-stay-at home before March 19; post-stay-at-home includes March 19 through May 18.

To reiterate from our previous post, it’s a waiting game for more time-based data in order to get a clearer picture of how COVID-19 related social and economic policies affect bicycle travel in the U.S.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tammy Lee, Ph.D.
Transportation Data Program Administrator

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

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

Photo by Nathan McNeil

Revisiting TODs: How Subsequent Development Affects the Travel Behavior of Residents in Existing Transit-Oriented Developments

Nathan McNeil and Jennifer Dill, Portland State University

• Download the Final Report (PDF)
• Download the Project Brief (PDF)
• Read the Multiyear Summary Report: Transit-Oriented Development in Portland: Multiyear Summary Report of Portland State University Surveys (PDF)
• Watch the June 2020 Webinar: Findings From 15 Years Of Travel Surveys At Portland Area Transit-oriented Developments (TODs)

Does living in a transit-oriented development (TOD) actually change the way people travel? That's the fundamental question that 15 years of research in Portland, Oregon seeks to answer.

Since 2005, Portland State University has worked with Portland’s Metro regional government to survey occupants of buildings for which developers had received funding from Metro’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Program. Metro strategically invests in TODs to help more people live, work and shop in neighborhoods served by high-quality transit. "Revisiting TODs," the latest installment in this research, is led by Nathan McNeil, a research associate in PSU's School of Urban Studies & Planning, and TREC director Jennifer Dill.

The report, released this month, revisits a set of suburban TODs with a second wave of surveys to understand how the travel behavior of TOD residents may have changed since the first survey. As neighborhoods become more developed with walkable amenities, how can we identify which factors influence changes in travel patterns?

BACKGROUND: 15 YEARS OF SURVEYS

Given the longstanding partnership between PSU and Metro, this research series was perfectly poised to investigate changes over time. Jennifer Dill, the director of PSU's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), led the first project in 2005. How do TOD residents commute? How often do they walk, bike and use transit compared with driving? Since then, the study has been periodically revisited:

1. 2006 Estimating the Impacts of TODs on Travel and Transit Use
2. 2007 Travel Choices at TransitOriented Developments: Survey Results from Portland’s Eastside
3. 2010 Transit Oriented Developments Survey
4. 2014 Transit Oriented Developments Survey
5. 2020 Revisiting TODs: How Subsequent Development Affects Travel Behavior

WHAT'S NEW IN 2020?

The second-wave surveys, coming 8-13 years after the baseline surveys, include five TODs in the west-side Portland suburbs of Hillsboro and Beaverton, two TODs in East Portland, and eight TODs in the east-side Portland suburb of Gresham. Second-wave surveys were sent to the same buildings as the baseline surveys (in most cases, to every unit), but not specifically to the same people as in the baseline. Surveys asked about household travel options, daily travel for work and non-work purposes, and questions on travel preferences and attitudes.

"Some of these buildings were the first residential mixed-use buildings to go up near a transit station. So we wanted to find out, as those blocks nearby get filled in, does that have any impact on travel behavior? We selected buildings where we saw that there had been neighborhood change over time. Our hypothesis was that we wouldn't expect transit use to change all that much, but we might expect more walking and biking with a more built-out neighborhood in the immediate vicinity, and maybe more shops or restaurants nearby," McNeil said.

KEY FINDINGS 

The second wave of surveys revealed three changes from the baseline that are consistent with the objectives of TODs:

1. The share of people commuting to work by driving alone four to five days a week fell from 58% to 46%, while the share never driving alone rose from 11% to 24%.
2. The share of people walking or biking to work at least one day a week rose from 9% to 29%; and
3. The share of people living in low-car households (fewer cars than adults) increased from 34% to 50%.

The residents’ attitudes about travel were very consistent between the two surveys. The only significant changes were:

1.  an increased preference for walking rather than driving whenever possible;
2. a decrease in feeling that getting to work without a car is a hassle; and
3. a decrease in whether gas prices affected daily travel choices. 

Consistent with those changes, a higher share of respondents in the second-wave surveys indicated that having sidewalks in the neighborhood was extremely important in choosing their current home (43% in 2020 vs. 31% in earlier surveys) and a lower share said that easy access to the freeway was extremely important (16% vs. 22%). The importance of transit access remained steady at 48%.

The research team is working on further analysis, including multivariate analysis, to identify specific factors that may help explain the travel behavior changes we did observe, including factors related to neighborhood change.

IMPLICATIONS

Transit-oriented development (TOD) seeks to create a symbiotic relationship between two significant infrastructure investments: public transportation and residential and/or commercial buildings. How can policymakers maximize the potential of both? Dense mixed-use buildings provide potential transit riders, while proximity to quality transit provides building residents, employees and visitors with improved access to jobs, services and recreation. However, other factors in the urban environment around the station and TOD building affect the likely success of both. This research offers insights that can help planners understand the factors influencing travel behavior at TODs, including neighborhood features.

"The webinar that we'll do next month will include both findings from this report and also a retrospective of all the TODs surveyed over the years. So that presentation will offer a more broad overview of our TOD research, including more buildings than we were able to include in this report," McNeil said.

LEARN MORE: Register for the June 2 webinar

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from Metro and Portland State University.

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

In the 2-30 days after a major earthquake, neighborhoods might look very different. Walking and rolling are more dependable ways for people to get around because they do not require fuel. This project examined how a resilient neighborhood-level transportation network could help neighborhoods recover after a major disaster. Hear more in this interview with Sabina Roan, a Master of Urban and Regional Planning graduate of PSU.

Watch the interview with Sabina.

Each year, through our Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) program, TREC offers a range of scholarships to assist students pursuing equitable, sustainable, and multimodal transportation. Four Portland State University students were awarded TREC scholarships for the 2020/2021 academic year: Darshan Chauhan of civil & environmental engineering, and Robert Hemphill, Philip Longenecker and Briana Orr of urban studies & planning.

Darshan Chauhan (Walter H. Kramer Fellowship)

Darshan Chauhan (see his NITC student spotlight here) is a graduate research assistant in civil engineering at Portland State University. He has served as the treasurer of STEP (Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning), PSU's transportation student group, and generously volunteers his time at a variety of transportation-related events via PSU's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC). He defended his masters thesis on network flow problems in fall 2019, and is now a PhD student in the civil engineering program. In the 2018/2019 and the 2019/2020 academic years, Darshan also earned a Walter H. Kramer Fellowship from Portland State University.

"The best thing about transportation is that it is about people and is community-centric. Along with this human aspect, also comes a lot of uncertainty. The work I do with Dr. Unnikrishnan is about appreciating this uncertainty and using it to make more comprehensive decisions for various facets of transportation.  Motivated by Dr. Walter H. Kramer's vision, this fellowship furthers my passion for making a difference in 'our cities, our society, and the community' through transportation." —Darshan Chauhan

Robert Hemphill (IBPI Active Transportation Scholarship)

Rob Hemphill is a student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning, interested in the intersection of transportation, housing, and land use to create complete and equitable neighborhoods. His academic work includes researching anti-displacement strategies for businesses impacted by the SW Corridor Light Rail, assessing the sustainable transportation policy options in the City of Portland and Multnomah County Climate Action Plan, and addressing e-scooter parking compliance issues with NITC scholar Phil Longenecker. Prior to attending PSU, Rob worked in the energy efficiency sector, the nonprofit sector, and political campaigns. Outside of school, Rob has been an activist with No More Freeways and Portland For Everyone. He has volunteered for Oregon Walks and The Street Trust. He lives car free and sometimes tries to see how many mobility options he can use in a day, often on the way to and from Portland Thorns games.

"TREC's commitment to making our transportation systems equitable for all users is evident in its IPBI Active Transportation scholarship and partnership with Alta Planning + Design. Together, these programs support research and tangible experience for people like myself that want mobility options and opportunity available to everyone. As we enter a new era grappling with the need for a built environment that provides physical space for everyone, the same foundations of active transportation will guide us. Further, through all the pandemic shenanigans, Portland State has continued to use the city and community as a laboratory for teaching, as we link the built environment to current outcomes from the pandemic and a future community more resilient. Knowledge continues to serve the city, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of that and gain experience that will carry on to my future career." —Robert Hemphill

Philip Longenecker (Excellence in Active Transportation Scholarship)

Philip Longenecker is a transportation planner at Alta Planning + Design, working on a range of projects including bicycle, pedestrian and trail master plans; new mobility strategies, statewide active transportation plans, encouragement and education programs, and bike share projects. He is a current masters student studying urban and regional planning at Portland State University. He has also been a bicycle and pedestrian planning intern for Hennepin County in Minnesota, as well as worked for the City of Minneapolis prior to moving to the Pacific Northwest.

"I am extremely thankful for the Excellence in Active Transportation award, it has given me the peace of mind to focus more on continuing my studies in bicycle and pedestrian planning and less on how to pay for school. The Transportation Research and Education Center at PSU is the reason why I moved to Oregon and pursue my planning degree here as opposed to other institutions, and I'm so thankful for the research opportunities it has afforded me. The knowledge, resources, and influence of TREC in shaping urban transportation policy makes it an invaluable component of Portland State University and its been an honor to take part in it." —Philip Longenecker

Briana Orr (Excellence in Active Transportation Scholarship)

Briana Orr is a Capital Projects Planner at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), advancing the delivery of Central City in Motion, PBOT's effort to implement pedestrian crossings, bus lanes, and bikeways in the city’s core. She has also served as PBOT's E-Scooter Pilot Project Manager and Bike Share Coordinator (check out her February 2019 presentation on the Portland E-Scooter Experience). She is a current masters student at Portland State University studying urban and regional planning. Briana’s work centers on making active transportation convenient, fun, and normal. Prior to PBOT, Briana worked in Seattle as Cascade Bicycle Club’s Communication Manager, and secured seed funding for bike share in Eugene as the University of Oregon’s first professional Bike Coordinator. Since her undergraduate days at the University of Oregon, Briana has been recognized for her leadership, engagement and initiative, and last year she won a WTS Portland scholarship as well as a 2019-2020 Excellence in Active Transportation Scholarship.

"Nine years after getting my diploma, I’m still paying off student loans for my undergraduate degree. This debt has prevented or delayed my ability to invest in areas in my life, including delaying my ability to pursue a master's degree. With the goal of obtaining a master's without falling deeper into debt, the availability of scholarships at PSU was critical to my decision to return to school. I feel incredibly fortunate for support from the Transportation Research and Education Center. Thanks in part to scholarships such as the Excellence in Active Transporation, I’ve been able to manage the cost of tuition without taking out additional loans. This means I can focus on advancing my knowledge and career instead of having to focus on how I'll pay for it. In short, the Excellence in Active Transportation scholarship is helping me today, and it is also helping me create a more financially secure future for myself tomorrow." —Briana Orr

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.