Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Presentation slides
• PDH Certificate

THE TOPIC

Having a strong pipeline of workers will be critical for ongoing efforts to improve transportation infrastructure, such as roads, highways, and bridges. This talk first provides an overview of the recruitment and retention of a diverse construction workforce in Oregon. Next are findings from research studies over the last ten years demonstrating the challenges experienced by workers on construction job sites that lead to low retention levels. The talk concludes with a discussion of several initiatives within the construction trades that have been implemented to address job site culture.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Addressing recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce will be needed to ensure a robust pipeline of workers in the transportation workforce
• Job site culture has a negative impact on retention as well as productivity and safety
• Efforts by public agencies and contractors can improve job site culture

SPEAKERS

Maura Kelly, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Portland State University

As a public sociologist, Maura Kelly researches inequalities in the construction trades and advocates to increase opportunities for women and people of color in the trades. Her evaluation research with Dr. Lindsey Wilkinson has assessed a variety of programs intended to increase the recruitment and retention of diverse workers in the trades, including the Highway Construction Workforce Development Program, Green Dot for the Trades, Oregon Tradeswomen and Constructing Hope pre-apprenticeship programs, Mentorship Matters, and City of Seattle Acceptable Work Sites.

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.

LEARN MORE

Photo by kzenon/iStock

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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.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Slides
• PDH Certificate

OVERVIEW

Drawing from the framework of social determinants of health, the objective of this study is to investigate the cross-sectional association between transportation-related factors and self-perceived physical health among adults in the U.S.

Data for this study were derived from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey. An analytic sample of 71,235 respondents aged 18 and 64 years was analyzed using binary logistic regression. Of the 71,235 respondents examined, 8.9% perceived their physical health to be poor. About 36% of the respondents had fewer vehicles per individuals in the household.

Controlling for the effects of other factors, respondents who had fewer vehicles per individuals in the household were 1.27 times more likely to report poor self-perceived physical health when compared to their counterparts with more vehicles per individuals in the household (AOR=1.27, 95% CI=1.17-1.39). Having higher education, higher income, and homeownership were inversely associated with poor self-perceived physical health.

The findings of this study suggest that as the gap between the number of household members and the number of vehicles present increases, respondents' self-perceived physical health deteriorates due to the uncertainty in having access to transportation when the need arises. Social workers, engineers, and policymakers should begin working on viable solutions to reduce or eliminate transportation barriers and address disparities created by lack of access to reliable transportation.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• How income inequality manifest in access to transportation
• Transportation as a social determinants of health
• The impact of household vehicle deficit on health

THE RESEARCH

This webinar is based on a study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and conducted at the University of Texas at Arlington. Read more about the research: Examining the Impact of Transportation- Related Barriers on Self-Perceived Physical Health among Adults in the United States.

SPEAKER

Philip Baiden, University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Philip Baiden is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington. He received his Ph.D. in Social Work from the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. Dr. Baiden’s areas of research interests include adverse childhood experiences, social determinants of health, vulnerable populations, and mental health outcomes. Dr. Baiden has been funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) where he was the Principal Investigator on a project to develop and test transportation barriers scale and its impact on mental health among at-risk/homeless youth and emerging adults in North Texas. Dr. Baiden has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed publications appearing in high-ranking academic journals and has presented his work at several national and international academic conferences.

Godfred Boateng, University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Godfred Boateng is an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington. Prior to joining UTA, Dr. Boateng worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2018-2019), Northwestern University (2016-2018), and Cornell University (2016). He received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 2016 from Western University, Canada. Dr. Boateng is an expert in the design and application of culturally relevant scalable methodologies in understanding the multi-dimensional factors and processes that shape health and health equity across spatial scales (household, community, institutional, national) and how these factors can be addressed in a sustained manner.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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

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Photo by AlexLinch/iStock

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

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM. 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Slides
• PDH Certificate
• TREC Twitter thread

THE TOPIC

Existing studies surveying transportation planners in Tribal communities have recognized two challenges: (1) that existing planning analysis tools do not always align with Tribal community context and needs, and (2) that it is not always clear what benefits planning provides to transportation project selection and delivery in Tribal communities. These challenges are outlined in a 2020 FHWA Research Needs Statement titled Making Transportation Planning Applicable in Tribal Communities.

This study, therefore, seeks to align available planning analysis tools to Tribal community needs based on a range of contextual factors, and to quantify the benefits of planning analysis in the project selection and delivery processes. Additionally, this study seeks to ensure that any findings optimize Tribal Transportation Program funding decision-making in Tribal communities. The audience for the study is primarily Tribal planning staff and, secondarily, FHWA’s Office of Tribal Transportation staff and other federal agencies and partners.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Learn how Tribes align planning tools to the specific Tribal planning need.
• Discuss the challenges and opportunities Tribes face ensuring long-range transportation plans are implementable by Tribal staff.
• Learn how Tribal communities link planning phase to project design, construction, and maintenance.

SPEAKER

Cole Grisham, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Western Federal Lands

Cole Grisham is a Transportation Systems Planner with FHWA Western Federal Lands. His work focuses on long range transportation planning, particularly in the areas of regional and intergovernmental policy in the American Northwest. Cole is a certified planner through the American Planning Association and hold a B.A. in Political Science and M.U.P. in Regional Planning from the University of Michigan. He is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Portland State University, focusing on regional planning and policy in Tribal 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.

LEARN MORE

Photo by Konoplytska/iStock

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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.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Slides
• PDH Certificate
• TREC Twitter thread

THE TOPIC

Past research and planning has highlighted the existence of pedestrian injury disparities throughout the US and some local agencies have performed cursory analysis in Oregon. However, no statewide analysis of pedestrian injuries in Oregon has been completed to see how these injury outcomes differ by race and income.

This presentation aims to help better understand the factors that result in disparate pedestrian injury outcomes for different sociodemographic groups. This research uses data from a variety of sources to understand pedestrian injuries by social equity measures including income, poverty, race, ethnicity, disability and English proficiency. The authors conclude that Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) experience a higher rate of pedestrian injury compared to the statewide average. 

This research also documents pedestrian injuries at the Census tract level and measures factors that influence pedestrian injury risk. Sociodemographic risk factors associated with pedestrian injury risk include race, income, disability, and limited English proficiency. Traffic exposure and built environmental factors were also influential in predicting where pedestrian injuries occur at the tract level. Download the recent research from the Oregon DOT here.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Presentation participants will better understand the magnitude of pedestrian injury disparities in Oregon.
• Presentation participants will better understand the traffic exposure and built environmental factors that drive these disparate outcomes.
• Presentation participants will better understand available methods for documenting pedestrian injury disparities by sociodemographic factors.

SPEAKERS

Josh Roll, Research Analyst, Oregon Department of Transportation

Josh Roll is the Active and Sustainable Transportation Research Coordinator with ODOT’s Research unit. He conducts and coordinates research on a variety of topics including bicycle and pedestrian travel, traffic safety, transportation decarbonization, among others. Josh enjoys using data and models to tell evidence based stories and holds out hope that with better information, transportation system managers can improve the performance of the system by reducing traffic injuries, producing less carbon emissions, and providing equitable access for everyone.

Nathan McNeil, Research Associate, Portland State University

Nathan McNeil is a Research Associate at Portland State University's Center for Urban Studies. He conducts research on impacts of active transportation and transit equity, on new bicycle infrastructure and programs on travel behavior and attitudes towards cycling, on shared-use mobility programs including carsharing and bike-share, and on the connection between land-use and transportation. He was Co-Principal Investigator on recent national studies of bike share equity (Breaking Barrier to Bike Share and National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs) and of protected bike lane implementations (Lessons from the Green Lanes). Nathan received a master of urban and regional planning from Portland State University (PSU) and studied history at Columbia University as an undergraduate. Prior to PSU, Nathan worked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City as a performance auditor where he evaluated capital programs and contractors.

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.

LEARN MORE

Photo courtesy of Oregon DOT

Sign up for our newsletter to receive monthly updates.

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.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Presentation Slides
• PDH Certificate
• TREC Twitter thread

THE TOPIC

The Active Transportation Return on Investment (ATROI) study aimed to provide a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the economic benefits of active transportation infrastructure in the Portland, OR region. The study was funded by Portland Metro and conducted by researchers at PSU and Metro.

This seminar will focus on one part of the study--a quantitative assessment of the economic impacts of 12 "catalyst" projects. These projects retrofitted busy commercial streets with pedestrian friendly treatments aimed at catalyzing economic development. The projects were in Beaverton, Cornelius, Forest Grove, Gresham, Milwaukie, Oregon City, Portland, and Tigard. The analysis estimated effects on employment, wages, and sales in the retail and food sectors.

Overall, we found positive effects for the retail and/or food sectors in nine of the 12 study areas. There were positive effects for projects located in different parts of the region, not just in more urban parts of the city of Portland. In addition to presenting the findings, this seminar will review the multiple methods and data sources used in the analysis.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• An overview of methods and data that can be used to assess the effects of street improvements on local business economic activity
• Understand whether pedestrian and bicycle street improvements can increase economic activity related to retail and food businesses, based on data from the Portland, OR region
• Learn about how the contexts of street improvements may affect economic outcomes

SPEAKERS

Jennifer Dill, Portland State University

Dr. Jennifer Dill is a professor in the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University (PSU) and Director of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at PSU. TREC houses the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), which she also directs. NITC is a national university transportation center funded by the US Department of Transportation focusing on improving mobility for people and goods to build stronger communities. Dr. Dill also serves on the Board of Trustees for the TransitCenter, a New York-based foundation that works to improve public transit in cities across the U.S.

Jenny Liu, Portland State University

Jenny Liu is an associate professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. She is an environmental and resource economist with a focus in transportation economics. Her research interests include the economics of alternative energy sources, links between transportation choices and environmental issues, the effects of physical infrastructure networks and social networks on the adoption of transportation technologies, and technology adoption and its effects on climate change, particularly within the urban and development contexts.

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.

LEARN MORE

Sign up for our newsletter to receive monthly updates.

Photo courtesy of Oregon Metro

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.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM. 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Presentation Slides
• PDH Certificate
• Twitter thread from TREC director Dr. Jennifer Dill

THE TOPIC

The diversity of road users is not equitably accounted for in vehicular and infrastructure design and funding allocation policies, among other areas that impact mobility. This impedes the ability for all road users to experience the same level of safety while traveling. Moving towards equitable road safety for all road users is critical to improve the quality of life and save lives of those that are most underserved in the transportation sector.

Professor Alyssa Ryan discusses two strategies to increase safety for vulnerable road users. First, a study on road injury differences between drivers of different biological sex is presented. This research highlights the crash conditions and vehicle components that lead to different injury outcomes for female and male drivers, emphasizing the importance of including both representative female and male anthropometry in vehicle testing and design. Next, a research study that explores the factors that impede the ability of municipalities to efficiently and equitably distribute highway funding to improve local road safety is presented. Given the diversity of needs of varying municipalities, this research presents that population characteristics and environmental characteristics lead to different levels of resource need to achieve the same level of safety as their counterparts.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Understand the policies and disparities that exist in the current vehicular testing procedures in the United States and throughout the globe.
• Understand the differences in injuries experienced by female and male drivers in comparable crash conditions and potential cause of those injury outcomes.
• Discover the different needs that various communities and local highway departments require to achieve higher levels of safety on their local roads.

SPEAKERS

Alyssa Ryan, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil & Architectural Engineering & Mechanics, University of Arizona

Alyssa Ryan is an Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Arizona. Her research primarily focuses on the intersection of transportation safety and equity with human factors, unmanned aerial system applications, traffic operations, and resource allocation. Professor Ryan completed her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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.

LEARN MORE

Photo by PhonlamaiPhoto/iStock

Sign up for our newsletter to receive monthly updates.

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.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Presentation Slides
• PDH Certificate

OVERVIEW

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) change our communities by improving the safety and convenience of people’s daily mobility. The system relies on multimodal traffic monitoring, that needs to provide reliable, efficient and detailed traffic information for traffic safety and planning. How to reliably and intelligently monitor intersection traffic with multimodal information is one of the most critical topics in intelligent transportation research.

In multimodal traffic monitoring, we gather traffic statistics for distinct transportation modes, such as pedestrians, cars and bicycles, in order to analyze and improve people’s daily mobility in terms of safety and convenience.

In this study, we use a high-resolution millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar sensor to obtain a relatively richer radar point cloud representation for a traffic monitoring scenario. Based on a new feature vector, we use the multivariate Gaussian mixture model (GMM) to do the radar point cloud segmentation, i.e. ‘pointwise’ classification, in an unsupervised learning environment.

In our experiment, we collected radar point clouds for pedestrians and cars, which also contained the inevitable clutter from the surroundings. The experimental results using GMM on the new feature vector demonstrated a good segmentation performance in terms of the intersection-over-union (IoU) metrics. The detailed methodology and validation metrics are presented and discussed.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• A mmWave radar based traffic monitoring system is presented.
• The radar can operate day and night under adverse weather conditions in traffic intersection.
• An unsupervised learning technique based on the multivariate Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is presented to segment the point cloud generated by radar.

THE RESEARCH

This webinar is based on a study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and conducted at the University of Arizona. Read more about the research: Development Of Low-Cost Radar-Based Sensor For Multi-Modal Traffic Monitoring.

SPEAKER

Siyang Cao, University of Arizona

Siyang Cao joined the University of Arizona in 2015 as assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, following a position as an automotive radar system engineer on algorithm, software and hardware development at Delphi. Cao is a graduate of The Ohio State University. His research focuses on the areas of radar signal processing, electronically scanned radar systems, radar imaging and machine learning with an emphasis on radar applications.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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

LEARN MORE

Sign up for our newsletter to get updates on our events.

Image by Siyang Cao and Yao-Jan Wu, University of Arizona

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

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM. 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• PDH Certificate
• TREC Twitter thread

THE TOPIC

The urban freight system is essential for the livability of any city. In the last decade, densification, the growth of e-commerce, and the changing mobility ecosystem have amplified commercial vehicles' (CV) challenges navigating the city streets or finding adequate space to park.

Much of the current research and transportation planning efforts at the urban scale have focused on passenger mobility, giving little attention to CV flows and their parking behavior. Furthermore, collecting CV data at the urban scale is challenging as this sector is fragmented, and its operations are complex, fast-changing, and heterogeneous. This results in local governments having limited insight into CV operations when developing appropriate and data-driven initiatives and policy measures.

In response to this urban challenge, this research focuses on the need for cities and researchers to collect comprehensive and high-quality data; and develop evidence-based knowledge about CV operations and their supporting infrastructure. This research combines a set of empirical case studies and analytical research including:

1. Documenting and analyzing urban CV parking patterns,
2. Developing and implements a comprehensive vehicle classification system focusing on the CV's heterogeneity, and
3. Conducting an unsupervised data mining method to discover and evaluate temporal and spatial CV traffic variations.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Learn about the complexity and heterogeneity of the urban commercial operations.
• Learn about the on-street load/unload infrastructure and commercial vehicle parking operations.
• Learn about data gaps in the current understanding of the urban freight system and the characterization of daily commercial vehicle traffic flow patterns.

SPEAKERS

Gabriela Girón-Valderrama, Portland Bureau of Transportation

Gabriela Giron-Valderrama served as the Urban Freight Coordinator at PBOT. Before joining PBOT, Gabriela worked as a Predoctoral Research Associate at the Supply Transportation and Logistics Center, contributing and leading novel research in the urban freight field. She directly collaborated with the lab’s public and private sector partners to work on solving problems relevant to urban good delivery system in the City of Seattle. These research efforts have resulted in the development of a new body of works, several publications in peer- reviewed journals, city reports, and new city protocols for urban freight infrastructure design and management.

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.

LEARN MORE

Photo by CaptureLight/iStock

Sign up for our newsletter to receive monthly updates.

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.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. You can join us online at 11:30 AM. All presentations are recorded and shared on the event page afterwards.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Slides
• PDH Certificate
• TREC Twitter Thread

THE TOPIC

In October 2021, Portland City Council accepted the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility (POEM) report. This was the culmination of 18 months of work by the POEM Task Force, a group of 19 volunteer community members who explored whether pricing tools—or charges related to driving or using road space—could be used to improve mobility, reduce climate impact, and make our transportation system more equitable. More information is available at Portland.gov/POEM.

At this seminar, POEM Project Managers Shoshana Cohen and Emma Sagor from the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) will share how this project took on the topic of “congestion pricing” from a new angle, putting equity at the forefront. They will review the framework used by the Task Force to evaluate a range of pricing tools—from parking prices to fees on private for-hire or delivery trips to bigger scale strategies like tolling and cordons—and the recommendations the group made to City Council, as well as what work will come next.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• How the POEM Community Task Force examined five different types of transportation pricing tools (parking pricing, fees on vehicle-based commercial services, highway tolling, cordon pricing and road usage charges) using an “equitable mobility framework.”
• Why the POEM Community Task Force concluded that pricing can improve mobility, reduce climate impact, and make our transportation system more equitable, but only if designed with intention, and what policy guidelines they recommend the City follow moving forward.
• What specific nearer-term pricing strategies and ideas seem to show the most promise to the POEM Community Task Force.

SPEAKERS

Shoshana Cohen, Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT)

Shoshana Cohen works for the Portland Bureau of Transportation where she manages the Intergovernmental Affairs team in the Office of the Director. She helps to advance PBOT’s state, federal and regional priorities and works on special initiatives related to top bureau goals. Shoshana has overseen PBOT’s congestion pricing efforts for four years and served as the co-project manager for the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility Task Force for the last two years. She has a Masters Degree in Urban Planning and Policy, and over 20 years of experience ranging from policy research to non-profit management. 

Emma Sagor, Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT)

Emma Sagor leads the Strategic Performance team for the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), where she focuses on tracking and analyzing data on how the bureau is advancing its strategic priorities of equity, safety, climate, mobility and asset management. Prior to this, she served for two years as the City of Portland’s Climate Advisor through the Bloomberg Philanthropies American Cities Climate Challenge. As part of her Climate Challenge responsibilities, she co-managed the Pricing Options for Equitable Mobility project, and supported other critical climate efforts including the Rose Lane Project. She has a Masters Degree in Regional and Urban Planning Studies from the London School of Economics and more than 10 years’ experience working in the academic, private and public sectors.

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.

LEARN MORE

Sign up for our newsletter to receive monthly updates.

Photo by GarysFRP/iStock

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.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Presentation Slides
• PDH Certificate

OVERVIEW

Mobility disparities among older adults affect their ability to travel and access services. This project seeks to understand challenges, barriers, and gaps that older adults experience and to develop forms of assistance or educational strategies to fill the varying mobility gaps and meet the mobility needs. This study characterizes older adults’ use of existing and potential transportation options, including conventional transit, paratransit, and ride-hailing systems, based on surveys and interviews collected from community-dwelling older adults in Dallas, Texas. Through the interview during the pandemic, the research team found that perceptual and knowledge barriers appear to be reduced among older adults to adopt new mobility options such as ride-hailing although financial and technology barriers still exist. Based on the findings, we discussed several strategies that can potentially reduce observed barriers and challenges and enhance mobility to ultimately increase social equity across transportation-disadvantaged populations, particularly among low-income older adults.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• The audience will evaluate older adults’ actual usages, awareness, willingness to utilize, and any associated challenges and barriers to access available transportation options.
• The audience will identify factors enhancing resilience among marginalized older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The talk will demonstrate how older adults’ heterogenous characteristics, expectations, motivations, and goals influence their satisfaction with different transportation options.

THE RESEARCH

This webinar is based on a study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and conducted at the University of Texas at Arlington. Read more about the research: Developing Strategies To Enhance Mobility And Accessibility For Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

SPEAKERS

Kate Hyun, University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Hyun is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at UT Arlington.  Her research centers on big data analytics using Intelligent Transportation Systems technologies for various applications including community mobility modeling, traffic monitoring and operation, freight transportation planning, safety, and travel behavior study. In recent five years, she served as the PI or co-PI over 20 interdisciplinary projects. She seeks to explore how professionals in different fields could interact around issues of transportation and transportation equity and to identify opportunities for enhanced collaboration and training in anticipation of emerging transportation needs for disadvantaged communities.

Caroline Krejci, University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Krejci is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering at UT Arlington.  She holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Washington.  Dr. Krejci’s research focuses on developing quantitative methodologies for the analysis and sustainable management of complex sociotechnical systems, including regional food supply networks, food recovery networks, crowd logistics systems, and urban communities.  She is particularly interested in finding ways to adapt traditional industrial engineering techniques and tools to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and resilience of decentralized production and distribution systems.  She previously worked at UPS, Lutron Electronics, and Iowa State University.

Kathy Lee, University of Texas at Arlington

Dr. Lee is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at UT Arlington. She is a licensed social worker and an applied researcher whose primary research goal is to create healthier, more equitable communities for vulnerable and marginalized older adults and their family caregivers. She is particularly interested in psychosocial interventions and community-based supports to improve the health and well-being of older adults. She is also interested in identifying disparities in health and health care systems by focusing on underrepresented populations in the field of aging. She was recently involved in two funded research projects regarding community mobility of transportation disadvantaged older adults. 

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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

LEARN MORE

Photo by bee32/iStock

Sign up for our newsletter to get updates on our events.

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