This is a reprint of a news story originally published by the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning.

Congratulations to Toulan School Assistant Professor Dr. Ozcan Tunalilar, inaugural recipient of the Arthur C. and Monika Z. Nelson Endowed Scholar Award, and Urban Studies doctoral candidate Minju Kim, inaugural recipient of the Nelson Endowed Doctoral Award.

The awards were established by PSU alumni Dr. Arthur Christian “Chris” Nelson and his wife Monika to support emerging scholars in the College of Urban and Public Affairs (CUPA). Dr. Nelson was inspired to create these awards because he himself received financial aid at a critical moment as a graduate student.

The Scholar Award supports new and early career faculty, as determined by the Dean of CUPA. The fund will supplement university funding for the recruitment and retention of early career faculty. The Doctoral Award supports doctoral students enrolled in CUPA with an approved dissertation proposal.

About our Nelson Scholar

Dr. Ozcan "Ozzy" Tunalilar is an Assistant Professor at the Institute on Aging & Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning. His primary objective as a scholar is to enhance the lives of older adults and individuals with disabilities.

With a scholarly agenda rooted in aging/gerontology and housing, Dr. Tunalilar’s research focuses on the complexities of residential care environments, such as assisted living communities and nursing homes, and examines their supply, organization, financing, and quality. His commitment to impactful research is evident through his substantial funding record and his extensive publication history.

In addition to his research, Dr. Tunalilar is dedicated to teaching and mentoring the next generation of scholars in aging, and he regularly teaches courses on aging and demography, such as Perspectives on Aging and Population and Society. Outside the classroom, Dr. Tunalilar actively involves both undergraduate and graduate students in research projects, providing them with valuable research experience.

His contributions extend to community engagement, as exemplified by his appointment to Oregon’s Quality Measurement Council, where he leverages his expertise in quality of care and quantitative methods to support the well-being of individuals living in assisted living and residential care settings.

About our Nelson Doctoral Awardee

Minju Kim is a PhD candidate in Urban Studies who also received a certificate in Gerontology. With a background in urban and transportation planning and gerontology, she brings a multidisciplinary perspective to her doctoral studies. Her work specifically focuses on older adults’ travel behaviors and how the transportation system can evolve to better accommodate the aging population.

As many countries face aging societies due to increasing average life expectancies, the discussion about older drivers and accessibility for older people will continue for generations to come. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the challenges confronted by the older population in increasingly aging societies. Specifically, Kim’s doctoral research seeks to uncover insights into the effectiveness of ride-hailing services as a viable transportation option for older adults when they stop driving through quantitative analysis and qualitative interviews. By delving into their perceptions, experiences, and challenges, she will explore ways of understanding and mitigating accessibility problems for older people. Ultimately, she'd like to make meaningful contributions to the fields of transportation and aging.

About Chris & Monika Nelson

Chris earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science with certificates in Urban Studies and Social Service at PSU in 1972, followed by a Master of Urban Studies degree in 1976 and then a PhD in Urban Studies specializing in regional science and regional planning in 1984. Monika Zimmermann Nelson earned her BA in Foreign Languages at PSU in 1973.

After graduation in 1972, Chris was a consultant in management, planning, and development along the West Coast. He likes to say that he kept going back to PSU to learn new skills so he could raise his rates. In 1984, with his PSU doctorate, Chris changed career paths into academia but remained active professionally through pro bono work, advisorships, research, and service. The College is grateful to Chris and Monika for their generous support.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) maintains two large, public transportation data lakes: PORTAL and BikePed Portal. The latest round of funding for PORTAL, in the amount of $1.6 million, was awarded in February 2024 and will cover PORTAL's activities through the next five years. BikePed Portal, too, recently received $100K for another year of funding, and both are the focus of some exciting innovations in transportation data.

The two centralized data repositories, unique both in their size and in the fact that they are accessible (PORTAL is freely available to the public, and BikePed Portal has limited public access as well), are supported by multiple federal, state, and regional agencies. Federal funding for PORTAL comes from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)'s Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) funding, suballocated by Metro’s Transportation System Management and Operations (TSMO) Program. Other funding sources include Vancouver Area Smart Trek (VAST), a program of the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council; Metro; TriMet; Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT); Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT); the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC); Washington County; Clark County, the Clark County Public Transit Benefit Area Authority (C-TRAN); the City of Vancouver, WA and the City of Portland, OR. This ongoing support ensures that our transportation data team can continue to add functionality and make "the Portals," as they're collectively called, even more useful. The goal is to help transportation professionals make informed, evidence-based decisions to improve safety, mobility, and equity in transportation systems. 

Aside from their obvious utility for transportation practitioners and researchers who need the data, the Portals offer a second benefit: Being housed at Portland State University, they connect students with hands-on practical experience and serve as a valuable educational tool.

Read on to learn about some brand-new features, goals for the future, and how PSU students have helped to create and shape the Portals.

In the near future we'll be hosting some workshops offering data training, including SQL, R, Python, and how to use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). If you'd like to be notified about a future workshop, fill out our Transportation Data Education form. 

Join the Portal Users Groups (PUG) mailing list to take part in monthly meetings and learn how to get the most out of PORTAL and BikePed Portal.

What Makes the Portals Unique to PSU? A Brief Recap

As an urban research university, PSU strikes a dynamic balance between theory and practice. Having two giant data repositories, with users all over the globe, housed in the very same building where computer science students take their day-to-day classes is both beneficial and highly unusual. Moreover, all of the data is hosted on PSU servers and supported by the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science's Computer Action Team (CAT), which is well equipped to provide the type of technical support needed.

Bruce Irvin, a senior instructor of computer science in PSU's Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, leads groups of seniors each year in their capstone projects. Capstone students work with community clients on real-world projects, and it's rare for such a large client to be so handily located.

"Most of our sponsors are not so close. They're out in Hillsboro or in Salem, or sometimes even outside the state. Having the PORTAL team right there in the same building was really something. It speaks well for the development of entities like TREC within the university. That cross-pollination of the real world and the academic world is really useful and helpful, and wonderful," Irvin said.

PORTAL was launched in 2003, and last year celebrated its twentieth anniversary. If you want to learn some fascinating details about how it works, you can watch the recording of a PSU Transportation Seminar: Celebrating 20 years of PORTAL (held in May 2023) which was presented by Basem Elazzabi and Tammy Lee.

Elazzabi is the head of programming and development for the PORTAL and BikePed Portal projects at TREC. He is responsible for maintaining and developing the infrastructure of both projects. He also does various data analysis and visualization tasks. He and TREC's transportation data program manager, Tammy Lee, have greatly developed and enhanced the Portals' capabilities over the past several years.

BikePed Portal was established in 2015 through a pooled fund grant administered by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), in order to improve and promote the use of active transportation data. For an account of its history, features, and various use cases, check out a 2020 interview with Lee and TREC's former associate director, Hau Hagedorn: The New BikePed Portal Dashboard: A National Non-Motorized Count Data Archive. 

On The Horizon

As we continue to develop the Portals, we're looking forward to incorporating some exciting new features, including enhancing BikePed Portal's pedestrian volume estimation capabilities which will in turn help ODOT to build and maintain quality infrastructure for people walking and rolling.

TREC's transportation data team has the ability to create custom interfaces for agencies, with exactly the features and numbers that they need. The team has created three transit-specific dashboards for TriMet, C-Tran and other agencies, which are capable of sourcing data from different places to show things like estimated load (how many people are riding transit) and seating capacity, alongside other metrics such as on-time performance. They've also developed a tool to annotate data, and the ability to add a correction factor to calibrated data.

The ability to create custom tools like this is one of the most powerful aspects of PORTAL and BikePed Portal, for agencies who want to use our data or share their own. Compared with applications such as ArcGIS, which is not designed for data-intensive uses, the PORTAL team is capable of working with large amounts of data and generating dynamic views built to users' specifications, which can continually update with live data, and even combine sources to pull information from multiple datasets.

Where Do PSU Students Come In?

Since its inception in 2003, countless PSU students have contributed to PORTAL in some way. This past academic year, two groups of graduating seniors in the engineering program worked with Lee and Elazzabi for their capstone projects, advised by instructor Bruce Irvin. A number of Graduate Research Assistants (GRAs) have also helped to develop aspects of PORTAL and BikePed Portal. 

During the winter and spring of 2023, undergraduate seniors Matthew Stevenson, Mohamed Al Zadjali, Mohamed A. Esmail, London Joseph, Nahom Ketema, Nicole Kurtz, Alessandra Wong, and Sam Ziegler worked to create a user interface for editing metadata in BikePed Portal. Lee felt that the collaboration was a win-win, helping both the students and the Portals.

"It was awesome that they were able to put something together and have something usable to integrate. The students were really good at communicating and keeping me up to date, and asked really good questions. They're working on something that's super tangible and has a lot of influence in the real world," Lee said.

Bruce Irvin agrees that it's good for the students to have a chance to tackle real-world challenges.

"What we look for in capstones is real projects for our students to collaborate on as a team. That's where they get excited. They get real world experience. And PORTAL has provided a unique opportunity: experience with a real code base. In classroom projects, you know, the professor comes in and they have some canned problem for the students to solve. And they ask them to write code to solve that problem. Great for learning. But out in the real world, students almost never write code from scratch. They're always extending, modifying, improving an existing code base. They have to learn it. They have to ask questions about it. They have to interact with it, and their code needs to work with it. So that is a big part of the benefit of working with PORTAL," Irvin said.

Finally, the students also get the benefit of mentorship. Working with the PORTAL team, students gain access to the viewpoint of professionals and have a chance to build relationships with people working in their future career field. 

By combining the goals of educating future professionals and improving public agencies' access to high-quality transportation data, PORTAL and BikePed Portal together embody PSU's "Let Knowledge Serve The City" motto and mission as an urban research university.

Learn More And Start Using the Portals

In the near future, we'll be hosting some in-person workshops offering data training, including SQL, R, Python, and how to use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). If you'd like to be notified when registration opens or dates are announced for a future workshop, fill out our Transportation Data Education form. 

Join the Portal Users Groups (PUG) mailing list to take part in monthly meetings and learn how to get the most out of PORTAL and BikePed Portal.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research. To get updates about what's going on at TREC, sign up for our monthly newsletter or follow us on social media.

Each year, the Portland Chapter of WTS awards scholarships to assist exceptional women in their educational pursuits in the field of transportation. The scholarships are competitive and selections are based on the applicant’s goals, academic achievements, and transportation related activities.

Three of the six scholarship winners this year are Portland State University (PSU) transportation students. Eun Jun Choi, Holly Querin, and Isa Swain will be presented with the awards during the 2024 WTS Scholarships and Awards Gala, which will be held Wednesday, April 17 in Portland.

Congratulations to the 2024 WTS scholars of PSU!

Eun Jun Choi: Jannet Walker-Ford Leadership Legacy Scholarship

Eun Jun Choi is a second-year doctoral student in Urban Studies with research interests in transportation planning, equity planning, and urban informatics. She is currently working as a research assistant on a project aimed at improving the planning model, VisionEval, under the guidance of Dr. Liming Wang. Prior to her doctoral studies at Portland State University, she earned a Master's degree in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California in 2022. She has experience working as a data analyst at the METRANS Transportation Center, specifically on the LA Metro Archived Data Management System project.

Connect with Eun Jun Choi on LinkedIn.

Holly Querin: Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship

Holly Querin is a second-year Masters in Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) student, specializing in transportation planning because it combines her passions for equity, sustainability, accessibility, and public health. She recently completed an internship at Metro working on the 82nd Ave Transit Project, and she serves as a board member for Oregon Walks, a pedestrian advocacy organization operating in the Portland region. She holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from Davidson College and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin. Outside of her studies, Holly enjoys coaching CrossFit, biking, reading, and swimming. 

Connect with Holly Querin on LinkedIn.

Isa Swain: Molitoris Leadership Scholarship

Isa is a second-year undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in civil engineering at Portland State University. As someone passionate about sustainable urban design, she wants to continue learning about how transportation systems impact the environment and the health of communities. She currently serves as an officer for PSU'S ITE student chapter, Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (ITE-STEP), and works as a mechanic at PSU’s Bike Hub. When she’s not biking around Portland, she loves to spend her time reading, going on hikes, and learning to cook new recipes.

Connect with Isa Swain on LinkedIn. 

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research. To get updates about what's going on at TREC, sign up for our monthly newsletter or follow us on social media.

The transportation safety crisis in America persists. People walking and riding bikes are more at risk than ever of being injured or killed, and those who manage transportation systems—in our case, State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and tribes—are in urgent need of more and better data to make walking and bicycling safer and more attractive.

Data can be a powerful tool for agencies in determining which bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure projects are most critical. Decision makers are pushing to increase walking and cycling rates to reduce greenhouse gases and other pollutants. Transportation engineers and planners are looking for solutions to achieving vision zero goals and making all road users feel safer while walking, cycling, and rolling. Health professionals see active transportation for daily needs as a long-term solution to a wide range of chronic diseases. Significant new sources of infrastructure funding can support investments that could help reverse the trend of increasing pedestrian and bicyclist injuries and fatalities and the stagnating trends of cycling and walking for transportation. Despite the clear need, decision makers and professionals do not always have the data and tools necessary to make informed decisions.

A research team led by Portland State University has been contracted by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) to create a playbook for DOTs and tribes to implement the most effective data solutions. At PSU, the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is teaming up with the Institute for Tribal Government (ITG) to lead the project. The rest of the project team comprises Toole Design Group, the Highway Safety Research Center at University of North Carolina, Sheri Bozic of EarthAlive Consulting, Dr. Nick Ferenchak of the University of New Mexico, and Elizabeth Stolz (The Traffic Data Consultant).

The Institute for Tribal Government (ITG) at PSU serves elected tribal governments from across the nation and also provides training and technical assistance on energy, water, transportation and other infrastructure projects. By joining forces with the Institute, we bring that expertise together with TREC's experience in delivering ground-breaking active transportation research and successfully translating research into resources that advance practice. The PSU members of the project team include Jennifer Dill, Nathan McNeil, Sirisha Kothuri, Tammy Lee and Basem Elazzabi of TREC, and Direlle Calica and Serina Fast Horse of the ITG. 

Read more about the NCHRP project: State DOT and Tribal Use of Active Transportation Data: Practices, Sources, Needs, and Gaps

WHY ARE DATA SOLUTIONS NEEDED?

The world of transportation data is a wild one. Pockets of people all over the country are doing innovative things to clean, maintain, update, store, and publish all sorts of metrics, yet many of these groups are isolated from one another, and their data are not always standardized or easily transferable. 

At Portland State University we have a transportation data lake, PORTAL. PORTAL has evolved from archiving a single source of data from one agency to multiple sources of data from multiple regional agencies, and is now the nation’s largest publicly available transportation data archive. We also maintain BikePed Portal, a nationwide database for standard non-motorized counts.

These initiatives, aiming to normalize the collection, archiving, and sharing of data and information, make PSU uniquely positioned to meet the project's objectives. The overall goal of this NCHRP project is to develop universal data standards and help the various entities combine and compare their data, making it more useful and accessible for practitioners. Using the image of data "lakes," the analogous goal of this NCHRP project might be to raise the water level – or perhaps dig canals – anything to connect the different entities who could be helping each other.

WHAT TYPE OF DATA?

How many people ride a bicycle or walk on major streets? Planners are challenged to predict travel volume trends, when active transportation volume data are unavailable.

Agencies generally have access to records of how many pedestrians and cyclists are killed by motor vehicles (though with some level of error), but usually lack similar data for injuries. Improved data to measure non-fatal injuries would vastly enhance the validity of the tools currently being used to prioritize safety investments.

State DOTs and tribes need up-to-date geospatial data that indicates where sidewalks, bicycle facilities, accessible public transportation stops and stations, and other infrastructure are located. For active transportation purposes, the condition of the infrastructure is important, including when considering Americans with Disabilities Act requirements and Public Rights-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines.

They're also looking for innovative use cases that could prove scalable. How are jurisdictions currently sharing data? What nontraditional or unusual data sources are being adapted into active transportation analyses? Where, specifically, are resources flowing? Just how many datasets are out there anyway? The research team will gather information to answer questions like these on data standardization, sharing, and governance.

WHAT TYPE OF SOLUTIONS?

The primary objective of this project is to develop a playbook of strategies for state DOTs and tribes to make effective use of active transportation data. A second objective is to draft data standardization formats that will improve data quality and facilitate data sharing nationally. To do this, the team will use a research approach that: 

• understands and critically examines how state DOTs and tribes are currently collecting, storing, using and sharing data;
• identifies data sources and gaps;
• assesses the state of the practice regarding pedestrian and bicycle injury and death reporting and integration systems;
• develops recommendations how to integrate, improve, and develop the data and tools to fill those gaps; and
• identifies best practices and case studies of how to achieve those recommendations.

With an increased focus on "open data," agencies need to establish policies and procedures for sharing data outside the agency, with the general public as well as other agencies. In many cases, it is necessary and advantageous to link different datasets. For example, the PSU team has developed a method for integrating emerging sources of bicycle activity data (Strava, StreetLight, and bikeshare) with conventional demand data (permanent counters, short-duration counts) to derive bicycle volumes on a network. This data fusion achievement is a useful example of how to combine multiple data sources and create more sophisticated models.

By prioritizing data needs and gaps, this project will help DOTs and tribes effectively use evidence-based research to achieve their goals.

Photo by choi dongsu/iStock

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research. To get updates about what's going on at TREC, sign up for our monthly newsletter or follow us on social media.

Portland's Old Town neighborhood is getting a new skatepark, and a team of PSU transportation students were instrumental in bringing the project from idea to reality. 

Given the project of activating a vacant lot on the west side of the Steel Bridge by transforming it into a community skatepark, students in the Spring 2023 bike-pedestrian planning class created a set of design options, a weighted decision matrix, and a memorandum of existing conditions for the site. They also developed performance measures to determine how best to meet the project's objectives of activating the space, creating a welcoming environment, and stimulating local business activity.

Their work provided a basis for ongoing conversations with stakeholders around the project, which ultimately resulted in a green light: Funding for the new skatepark was announced in January by Commissioner Dan Ryan, who oversees Portland Parks & Recreation. Work is slated to begin this spring on property acquisition, community engagement and design of the 35,000 square foot facility.

"Getting to see this skatepark regularly as I navigate the city will be a nice reminder of why I entered the planning field to begin with," said Lise Ferguson, a student who worked on the project.

The Steel Bridge Skatepark is just the latest of many successful projects to come out of the Better Block PSU project pathway: a process in which community leaders are connected with PSU planning and engineering students to design and implement community-driven projects in public spaces. Each Better Block PSU project has a project "champion" who serves as the point of contact between students, faculty, and external stakeholders.

The 2024 Better Block PSU RFP is open now. Have an idea to reimagine an underused public space in your neighborhood? Submit your project idea by March 11.

The project champion for the Steel Bridge Skatepark is Ryan Hashagen, director of the Steel Bridge Skatepark Coalition. He is also one of the community volunteers leading Better Block PDX, and has long been a proponent of the PSU project pathway.

"The Steel Bridge Skatepark Coalition utilized the amazing work of PSU Urban Planning students to further conversations around access opportunities, existing conditions, and stakeholder engagement with Portland Parks, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, and City Hall. The PSU Better Block Project Pathway helped move the Steel Bridge Skatepark concept towards reality as PSU Students let their 'Knowledge Serve the City,'" Hashagen said.

The PSU Project Team

The PSU Steel Bridge Skatepark Team consisted of Urban Studies & Planning students Anchal Erachankandy Cheruvari, Summer Cook, Lise Ferguson, Andrew Napurano, Elias Peters, Symeon Walker, and Gabriel Quiñones-Zambrana.

Lise Ferguson, a second-year Master of Urban & Regional Planning (MURP) candidate who also works as an engineering intern at the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), was the project lead. She is intrigued with the concept of providing more accessible "third places," or public locations where people go to socialize or relax in between work and home.

"I am interested in ways to add more 'third places' to urban areas that are not necessarily commercial-based. While we tend to prioritize the revitalization of downtown's economic health, it is also important to activate the space by making it appealing to a wide variety of people, not just those who travel downtown to spend money," Ferguson said.

During their information-gathering stage, the student team spent time at the proposed site of the future skatepark, just being still and observing the area.

"These field observations were a new experience for me, and I learned a lot that you can't from combing through data alone—like learning the travel paths pedestrians and cyclists favored, and how that might impact the accessibility and visibility of the skatepark," Ferguson said.

The partnership between PSU students and community project leaders has obvious benefits for both sides: students gain work experience, and partnering organizations get free research and consulting. However, the collaboration brings an additional perk that's harder to define. Ideas from students can be like a breath of fresh air for the industry.

"Fresh in our minds are concepts of equity and theory, which I think are easy to lose focus on as planners get further into their professional careers," Ferguson said.

More Better Block PSU Success Stories

Grounded in tactical urbanism and pop-up demonstration projects, the Better Block PSU project pathway made a name for itself through projects like Better Naito, Better Broadway, and the Ankeny Alley/SW 3rd Plaza project. Since being officially added to the PSU curriculum in 2019, the program has continued to make its local impact felt. Below are just a few recent projects that moved through the Better Block PSU pathway:

• Safety Improvements to Hood River Middle School (Implemented in 2022)
• Re-Imagining a Safer Route to the César Chávez School (Implemented in 2021)
• SW Madison Bus Lanes (Built by PBOT)
• MLK/Grand Bus Lanes (Built by PBOT)
• Burnside Bridge Bus Lanes and Protected Bike Lanes (Built by PBOT)

Inviting PSU students in on the planning and design stages of projects like these both embodies PSU's role as an urban research university, and offers a shift from the status quo with a ground-up approach. The Better Block PSU program encourages everyone to imagine what spaces could be when they are designed for people.

Left image courtesy of PSU Steel Bridge Skatepark Team / Right image from Google Street View

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. We produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education and participation in research. To get updates about what's going on at TREC, sign up for our monthly newsletter or follow us on social media.

The Better Block PSU program at Portland State University (PSU) has opened the annual call for community organizations to reimagine their streets and underused public spaces in a way to bring people together and reclaim it for their community’s future. 

A partnership between the public spaces advocacy nonprofit Better Block PDX and the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at PSU, students in the Better Block PSU program have developed plans and designs for many community-driven projects that promote equitable placemaking, community building, and active transportation–including the well-known Better Naito project. What began as a PSU student-led initiative for safer and higher capacity bicycle and pedestrian facilities along the Waterfront Park, has gained so much public support that it was permanently implemented by the City of Portland.

Integrated into PSU planning and engineering classes, these projects can be powerful demonstrations of community-led ideas.

Do you have an idea for a project that could help activate space for your community? Submit your proposals by March 11, 2024. Selected projects are eligible for grant funding up to $1,000. You can find the application and more information on the Better Block PSU webpage.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is home to the U.S. DOT funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), PORTAL, BikePed Portal and other transportation grants and programs. Better Block PDX is a local non profit dedicated to reimagining public spaces using temporary traffic control. Collaborating on the Better Block PSU program, we bring together community groups, public officials, and PSU students to test out new uses of our public right of ways. 

Public transportation agencies are well acquainted with the consequences of unsheltered homelessness. A new report published this month provides timely and valuable information about how transit agencies can support people experiencing homelessness in our communities and minimize the impacts on public transportation services and facilities.

The report, funded by the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TRCP), was co-authored by TREC's sustainable transportation program manager John MacArthur along with Marisa Zapata, Anna Rockhill and Rebeca Petean of Portland State University's Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative (HRAC). The researchers will present on the project in an upcoming webinar (date TBA) in March 2024, hosted by the Transportation Research Board (TRB). 

While transit agencies cannot address the underlying causes of homelessness, there are opportunities to work with local partners to be a part of helping individuals in need, while providing a safe, reliable, and customer-friendly experience for all riders.

"I think transit agencies can no longer look at themselves as just providing transit. Their role in the way a community functions is so much bigger than that. Transit is the connection that gets a lot of people to essential services that will improve their lives. Transit agencies need to rethink how they are serving all riders, including people experiencing homelessness, and how they can - more humanely and with attention - make the system more usable for all riders. Both for the people who are homeless, but also for riders who are interacting with people using the system," MacArthur said in a 2021 interview.

Drawing on relevant research and the firsthand experiences of public transportation agencies across the United States, this guide is a valuable resource for public transportation agencies, stakeholders, and the communities they serve.

To read about transit agency experiences and lessons learned as they have developed programmatic activities that respond to homelessness, download the final report: Homelessness: A Guide for Public Transportation.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is a multidisciplinary hub for all things transportation. We are home to the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), the data programs PORTAL and BikePed Portal, the Better Block PSU program, and PSU's membership in PacTrans, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium. Our continuing goal is to produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education, seminars, and participation in research.

The trip to and from school is made by nearly every child in Oregon every school day. Bike and walk buses, organized groups of school children, parents, and ride/walk leaders, seek to encourage biking and walking to school. A new research project at Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) will gather information on bike buses nationwide, inspired by the success of Sam Balto's bike bus initiative at Alameda Elementary School in Portland, Oregon.

Balto, a physical education teacher, catapulted into the limelight in 2022 after establishing a weekly bike bus involving over 100 students commuting to school on two wheels. Its success and popularity prompted a broader initiative to understand and promote the benefits of bike and walk buses across the United States.

Researchers John MacArthur and Nathan McNeil, along with Evan Howington, a student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program at PSU, aim to gather comprehensive information on existing bike bus programs nationwide, with plans to include information on walk buses in the near future. They'll collect information about bike buses (what they are, where they are, how they work) and develop a library of references to them in local, national and international media. In the first phase of the research, they plan to launch a data collection tool to allow volunteers to record the number of students and parents riding on a specific day. 

The project will also use surveys and interviews to document the experiences of parents and children participating in bike buses in the Portland area, including stated motivations, perceived benefits, and challenges.

Aside from mitigating some of the negative effects of parents driving kids to school (including traffic congestion in school zones, increased air pollution, and safety risks), bike and walk buses provide benefits to kids. Physical activity has been associated with improved academics and behavior, and offers potential for positive social interactions, and learning about bicycling, traffic safety and navigating their communities. 

Learn more about the project, Exploring Bike Bus Programs in the United States.

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is a multidisciplinary hub for all things transportation. We are home to the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), the data programs PORTAL and BikePed Portal, the Better Block PSU program, and PSU's membership in PacTrans, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium. Our continuing goal is to produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education, seminars, and participation in research.