Jennifer Dill, director of Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), has been named the inaugural editor-in-chief of the Transportation Research Record (TRR). The TRR—the flagship journal of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board (TRB)—is one of the most cited and prolific transportation journals in the world, offering wide coverage of transportation-related topics.

While maintaining her current role as the director of TREC, Dill will begin her duties at TRR on July 15, collaborating with the TRR team and TRB volunteers to enhance the journal’s role in improving the nation's transportation system through high-quality research.

"The Transportation Research Record and TRB have played key roles in my scholarly and professional career. My very first peer-reviewed journal article was published in TRR based on research I did as an undergraduate student with my mentor, Dr. Dan Sperling. That opportunity opened my eyes to the possibility of being a researcher and professor," Dill said.

Prior to entering academia, Dill worked as an environmental and transportation planner at the federal and regional levels. When she first started as an assistant professor at Portland State University, she was inspired by an article in TRR to start a new thread of research focused on bicycling. This has shaped her career ever since: Dill today leads TREC, a national center in the field of active transportation research, while her own research continues to advance the state of practice around sustainable, multimodal transportation. Her work focuses on decision-making at both the individual and institutional levels, with a particular interest in multimodal and active transportation and the impacts of these choices on health, equity, infrastructure, and the environment.

"I have continued to publish in TRR... because I want my research to reach a particular audience—practitioners who can use the findings to make better decisions, like I did early on in my career," Dill said.

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 need for improving active transportation safety and mobility is clear: Nationally, since 2004, the share of all road user deaths that are pedestrians has risen from just under 11% to nearly 17% in 2020. Cyclists’ share of all fatalities has also increased over the past decade, from 2.1% in 2011 to 2.4% in 2020.. In many cases, solutions are also clear: for example, there are numerous evidence-based approaches to making walking and bicycling safer and more comfortable through improved infrastructure. So if the needs and solutions are clear, why are we not progressing more quickly toward improved road safety and better active transportation options?

In many ways, walking, bicycling, and rolling have not been a top priority for state departments of transportation (DOTs). Changing agency practice is essential: DOTs need research to help them better implement active transportation effectively and seamlessly.

This is the objective of a newly launched project, funded by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP). Over two years, researchers will create an active transportation institutionalization guide to help state DOTs change their culture and processes and integrate active transportation into every stage of their work, from program development and project funding to project delivery, operations and maintenance.

The research team is led by Jennifer Dill of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University (PSU), along with Nathan McNeil and John MacArthur. Project partners include Erin Flanigan at Applied Research Associates (ARA), who has pioneered the application of the Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) CMM assessment framework at multiple transportation agencies, and Kelly Rodgers at Streetsmart Planning.

WHAT WILL THE NEW PROJECT DO? 

The objective of this project is to provide a framework for state DOTs to institutionalize active transportation. The guide produced by the research team will include a capability maturity model (CMM) for organizational assessment of readiness. 

The framework and guide will also include:

• examples of successful implementation practices;
• models for partner and stakeholder coordination and public engagement;
• considerations for organizational structure, policy, process, and procedural changes needed to embed and integrate active transportation into program development, project funding, project delivery, operations, and maintenance; and
• strategies for overcoming barriers to implementing and institutionalizing transportation improvements to equity, access, safety, and health.

Read more about the new project: NCHRP 08-164: Institutional Integration of Active Transportation

Photo by ArtMassa/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.

Transportation decision-makers typically use benefit-cost analysis (BCA) to evaluate the tradeoffs of transportation projects. However, it is difficult to produce state-specific measures that are multimodal and can consistently evaluate the full range of public and private benefits and costs for Oregonians.

Supported by a $200,000 grant from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), Jenny Liu of Portland State University will lead a research effort to develop an Oregon-specific, multimodal framework for transportation benefit-cost analysis.

Having a framework specifically tailored to Oregon can help ODOT make informed decisions on infrastructure, policies and support programs based on information about the economic and societal impacts of each transportation mode.

Launched in May 2024, the project, "Mode-Based Benefit-Cost Analysis Calculator" aims to create an easy-to-update Oregon BCA framework to compare transportation benefits and costs for better policy, program, and investment assessments. The research will also develop a methodology that incorporates equity and distributional assessments into the multimodal BCA framework. This will contribute to ODOT’s Strategic Action Plan priority of equity and inclusion.

The primary outcome of this project will be an easy-to-use, quantified assessment tool for transportation costs. Knowing public and private costs based on locally-specific and well-sourced data will help ODOT make financially sustainable decisions, as well as apply for federal discretionary funding. 

Findings from this research will have broad application in ODOT, supporting the agency’s greenhouse gas reduction goals and incorporating equity and distributional considerations. 

For example, "VisionEval" is a version of Oregon's statewide GreenSTEP model, which was developed by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to conduct long- range strategic planning. VisionEval modeling has a social cost parameter that can be used to assess the cost of a scenario. The project team will collaborate with the ongoing research project Development Of A New Visioneval Land Use Model And Applications To Evaluation Of Climate Strategies In Oregon, in which PSU's Liming Wang is working to update the VisionEval land use models and applications, to identify how the BCA framework might best be integrated into future developments.

The new project will also support communication around tolling and road usage charges by providing an accessible assessment of the cost of subject modes, and guide efficient decision-making about transportation system development by demonstrating economically efficient modes. An interactive dashboard will be developed to help ODOT users further integrate the new BCA framework into ODOT practice.

Photo courtesy of the Oregon Department of Transportation

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.

Shared micromobility (including shared electric scooters and bikes provided by private companies) is one of the newest transportation options that has come to cities in the last several decades. A new report explores the different ways cities charge shared micromobility companies to operate, and how these funds are used.

In the newly released report, John MacArthur of Portland State University, Kevin Fang of Sonoma State University and Calvin Thigpen of Lime examine data from 120 cities in 16 countries around the world. They also conducted a survey of cities’ shared micromobility program managers, with responses representing 33 jurisdictions in North America.

Download the report: "Taxing shared micromobility: assessing the global landscape of fees and taxes and their implications for cities, riders, and operators (PDF)"

"This study builds our understanding of a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of cities, riders, and micromobility operators: how to run a system that is affordable for riders while also remaining financially sustainable for micromobility operators. In the last 6 months alone, the industry has seen substantial upheaval through mergers, bankruptcies, and closures. So as cities revisit their program regulations, we hope they take into consideration that the industry has matured substantially since fees were initially established - with safer vehicles, better operations, and closer city collaboration - as well as the role shared micromobility can play in achieving sustainability and equity goals," Thigpen said
 

Digging into how each city made the decision of what to charge, the researchers find that taxes and fees vary dramatically from city to city and may not always reflect the city's stated policy goals.

"Though cities are using fees and taxes to mitigate the cost of program administration, which is very understandable given local budget constraints, these additional costs to riders can be at odds with a city’s broader goals for supporting sustainable and equitable transportation," MacArthur said.

The findings also reveal a trend of cities charging less for shared bicycles than for shared scooters. The notable exception to this pattern is Denver (which has both e-bikes and scooters), where the city does not differentiate between vehicle types and charges no program fees.

"One concern sometimes raised about shared micromobility are user fares. To the degree fees increase the cost of business and get passed along to riders, cities have a say in fares with their fee levels," Fang said.

Four Key Findings

1) Fees vary dramatically between cities. Some cities do not impose program fees at all, in line with municipal transportation goals. In cities that do assess program fees, the common types are per-trip, per-vehicle, flat annual, and flat one-time fees. There are large differences in the fee amounts that cities charge – for example, the highest per-vehicle fee is over four hundred times higher than the lowest.

"Fee levels were consistently inconsistent. In some cases, cities had zero permit fees. On the other end they could be a dollar or two for every trip," Fang said.

2) Shared micromobility is taxed twice—via sales tax and program fees—and these revenues can be substantial. On average, cities charging an annual fee received over a third of a million USD each year. If sales taxes/value added taxes (VAT) are included with fees, the average shared micromobility trip generates a fee + tax revenue of $0.70 USD per mile or $0.89 USD per trip. This means that globally, shared micromobility programs bring in an average rate of 16.4% of revenue from user fares in taxes and fees.

3) Shared micromobility taxes and fees are higher than most other modes of transportation, especially driving and ridehail. The research team found that fees and taxes on shared micromobility are significantly higher compared to other travel modes, being 23 times higher per mile than personal cars and over 5 times higher than ridehail trips.

"On average, fees and taxes on shared micromobility were quite a bit higher than charges on personal driving or ride-hail trips. This seems counter to many cities' goals of promoting alternative modes of travel," Fang said.

4) When deciding on fees, cities are especially concerned with covering administrative costs as well as influencing operator behaviors. The primary use of fee revenue is to cover program administration costs, rated as the top consideration by 77% of respondents (see chart below). Ensuring financial feasibility for scooter companies or lowering rider costs were less prioritized, even though both would benefit the shared micromobility system.

While cities’ concerns over budget are understandable, this consideration can be at odds with cities’ broader goals for supporting alternative transportation.

"After the boom of shared micromobility in 2017, cities looked at fees as a way to react to this new mode. We see that cities are still setting fees to cover program administration costs, but also as a way to influence operator behavior of how they operate their systems in the public rights-of-way," MacArthur said.

Download the report (PDF) for details about the research, including the survey that was distributed to shared micromobility program staff and the methods used to calculate taxes and fees for other modes of transportation. The report's appendix includes a complete summary of program fees in each jurisdiction as well as shared micromobility program fee revenues in 2022.

Who Can Use This Research?

Fees and taxes are relevant to all three of the major "stakeholders" in the shared micromobility field: cities, private micromobility companies, and travelers.

There have been numerous studies on cities’ shared micromobility policies around parking, ridership, safety, equitable distribution of vehicles, and sustainability. By contrast, there has been little research on the taxes and fees levied on shared micromobility systems and how they work to advance or deter municipal goals for shared micromobility.

The researchers provide case studies of cities taking different—and evolving—approaches to illustrate how different cities weigh tradeoffs. The information provided in this report can help inform cities who are working with shared micromobility companies to align program fee structures with their goals around climate, equity, congestion and more.

In a section offering rationales for lowering (or not charging) fees, the report notes that the shared micromobility landscape has changed since e-scooters first swept the world in 2017 and 2018. The shared micromobility industry no longer deploys at-will in city streets, but rather works through formal procurement processes to serve cities.

"Considering the newness of shared micromobility, it is not that surprising that approaches to fees have varied so widely initially. Today, though, cities are mostly on the same page with what they want with micromobility operations, so greater alignment on fees probably makes sense," Fang said.

Shared scooters and bikes are no longer just pilots; most cities now have multi-year permits with established operators. Both cities and companies are aware of the risks of poorly managed systems and have developed technologies and programs to address equity and operational challenges. This research offers a comprehensive look at how cities around the world are approaching the question of what to charge, and offers strategies to ensure that a city's fee structure supports transportation policy goals.

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.

In a new project that's just getting underway, Portland State University researchers will work with researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to develop tools and a decision-making process to proactively design and retrofit roadways to make them safer. 

Led by Sirisha Kothuri of the Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science and supported by the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT), the effort aims to help WSDOT implement a Safe System Approach to prevent dangerous crashes. They intend to implement safe systems in conjunction with another principle embraced by WSDOT and many other transportation agencies, the Complete Streets concept. Complete Streets is a planning and design method that prioritizes safe access for all road users.

"PSU along with UNC is excited to help WSDOT implement the Safe System Approach to road safety within the Complete Streets context. This work aims to reduce crashes for all road users generally, and in particular to eliminate fatal and serious injury crashes," Kothuri said.

WHY THE SAFE SYSTEM APPROACH?

As described by the United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT), the Safe System Approach has been embraced by the transportation community as an effective way to address and mitigate the risks inherent in our transportation system. It works by building and reinforcing multiple layers of protection to both prevent crashes from happening in the first place and minimize the harm caused to those involved when crashes do occur. It is a holistic and comprehensive approach to making places safer for people.

In the 2022 Legislative session, with WSDOT input, Washington's state transportation budget included requirements to develop Complete Streets projects using safe system principles. The U.S. DOT, too, has formally adopted the approach as part of its National Roadway Safety Strategy. The Safe System Approach calls for strengthening every part of the transportation system with safer roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds, safer road users, and post-crash care to create an overlap of countermeasures that prevent death and serious injury. 

PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Current fatality and serious injury trends continue to rise steeply for all road users, particularly vulnerable users, in both Washington State specifically and across the United States more broadly. With the $199,750 in funding from WSDOT, the PSU research team will spend the next two years developing a knowledge base to enable planners and engineers to influence planning, programming, design, and operational decisions in order to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes. 

Included in this knowledge base will be specific, illustrated approaches for evaluating route directness (RDI) and level of traffic stress (LTS) on both the corridor level and project level. The team will identify potential approaches to navigating the problem of traffic stress: Either by directly lowering the LTS of a roadway through strategies like lowering speeds, reducing lane number, or reducing annual average daily traffic so that less costly multimodal facilities will be needed; or else by mitigating LTS with robust multimodal treatments.

The researchers will create tools in the form of matrixes, tables, worksheets and other systems that will enable the people involved in planning, scoping, and designing Complete Streets to identify specific solutions (treatments, or suites of treatments) that act as mitigations to lower LTS to the Complete Streets goal.

NEXT STEPS

To begin this work, the research team will first consult with WSDOT to select a variety of sites for case studies. The selected sites will contain intersections and roadway segments with different characteristics in terms of roadway geometry (intersection or segment configuration), traffic volumes (vehicle and non-motorized), transit service and availability, and roadway context (land use typologies, equity metrics, and other built-environment or sociodemographic characteristics).

The case study analysis will focus on how geometric, operational, and contextual features contribute to crashes. Results of the evaluations will be compared to determine the effects on safety of different site-specific characteristics.

THE PROJECT TEAM

Applying the Safe System Approach in Decision-Making

The team, consisting of researchers from Portland State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, bring a wealth of experience in the Safe System Approach. Sirisha Kothuri of PSU and Wesley Kumfer of UNC will be the Co-Principal Investigators on this study. They will be assisted by PSU's Jason Anderson and UNC's Stephen Heiny and Alessandro Figueroa.

Photo by Dongho Chang, WSDOT State Traffic Engineer and Director of Transportation Operations

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.

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.