WATCH THE RECORDED VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

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

TEACHING MODULE

Looking for a simple lesson plan outline? Here's a snapshot of the curriculum developed by this project, for faculty who might be interested in incorporating it into their transportation courses.

OVERVIEW

Vehicle operating dynamics data have a fundamental impact on the design of roadways, but collecting this type of data is not part of your typical college curriculum. Instead, engineering students are handed a textbook, leaving them without a firsthand experience of how accelerations and decelerations “feel” to the driver, the ultimate consumer of their designs. Seeking to change this norm, Roger Lindgren and C.J. Riley, civil engineering professors at the Oregon Institute of Technology, undertook a NITC education project to incorporate more real-world data collection and analysis into transportation courses. This webinar will offer a detailed look at the recently published project "Instructional Modules for Obtaining Vehicle Dynamics Data with Smartphone Sensors" and how you can implement it into your coursework.

SPEAKER

Roger Lindgren, Oregon Institute of Technology

Dr. Roger Lindgren is a native of Edmonton, Canada and has over twenty years of engineering and teaching experience. His research interests include traffic flow theory, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), microscopic simulation of urban and rural traffic, as well as pavement design and construction. Dr. Lindgren's doctoral research included empirical studies of freeway traffic data in an effort to extend the knowledge and understanding of traffic features in queued and congested flow. Dr. Lindgren joined the faculty at Oregon Tech. in 1999 and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in transportation engineering as well as lower-division courses in engineering fundamentals.

Jordan Preston, Oregon Institute of Technology

Jordan Preston is finishing a co-terminal BS/MS in civil engineering with a minor in GIS at Oregon Tech. Her graduate project is a Complete Streets corridor study that includes design principles from a summer bicycle transportation course in Europe. The development of these instructional modules with smartphone technology was the first of her two NITC research projects. Second, she is on the multi-institutional team with “Rethinking Streets for Bikes,” assisting in development of a visual, evidence-based book focused on excellent bicycle-oriented street retrofits, which will be completed this year. Jordan has accepted a position with HLA Engineering and Land Surveying in Yakima, WA, which is a small, private firm specializing in municipal engineering projects, which she will start in July.

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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PRESENTATION SLIDES

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

OVERVIEW

TREC is co-hosting this event with the Portland chapter of Young Professionals in Transportation (YPT Portland). Listen to how the fastest growing city in the Netherlands is planning to absorb its growth by urbanization within the existing urban area. Between 2018 and 2030, the city of Utrecht is expecting its population to increase by 17% to 400,000. Visiting scholar Lucas van der Linde, Urban Mobility Traffic and Transport Policies Consultant at Goudappel Coffeng, will be sharing key strategies of the city’s growth plan, including mobility as a service (MaaS) and their focus on multimodal accessibility through mobility hubs in the inner city. 

3:30 - 4:30 PM: Summer Seminar is in Parsons Gallery Room 212 at the PSU College of Urban and Public Affairs. This seminar is an in-person only event; there will not be an online component.

SPEAKER

Lucas van der Linde, Gouddapel Cofeng

Lucas van der Linde is a Consultant in Urban Mobility, working for Goudappel Coffeng, the leading consultancy firm in urban mobility policies from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He obtained his Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Utrecht in 2014, Cum Laude, and has worked in the field for four years. As a generalist, he works on a wide range of projects for governmental agencies and developers within the field of mobility in the Netherlands and Sweden. This includes designing complete streets, bicycle planning and traffic modeling. In the past years he has specialized in ‘multimodal mobility hubs’, i.e. the concept for new major urban developments within current city boundaries in which high quality bicycle and public transport infrastructure in combination with low parking norms ensures that future inhabitants of those new neighborhoods have a sustainable mobility pattern.

WATCH THE RECORDED VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

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

OVERVIEW

Every day transit riders ask the same question: when’s the next one coming? To answer this question, transit agencies are transitioning to providing real-time transit information through smartphones or displayed at transit stops. 

The proliferation of transit planning and real time arrival tools that have hit the market over the past decade is staggering. Yet with transit ridership on the decline, agencies can’t afford to ignore the importance of providing accurate, real time information to their customers. Real-time transit information improves the reliability and efficiency of passenger travel, but barriers have prevented some transit agencies from adopting the GTFSrealtime v1.0 technology. A new NITC-funded study in May led by Sean Barbeau of the University of South Florida seeks to remove some of these barriers to make real-time transit info a universal amenity. As a public agency partner, moovel focuses on delivering simple, frictionless and accurate information through mobile applications. From mobile ticketing to multi/intermodal trip planning, booking and payment, moovel’s mobile apps take a customer-first approach to enhance the customer experience through an intuitive mobile solution.

This webinar will discuss the lessons learned from using GTFS and GTFS-realtime data in real-world applications and how these experiences lead to the development of the GTFS Best Practices (http://gtfs.org/best-practices/), GTFS-realtime v2.0 (https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/), and the open-source GTFS-realtime Validator tool (https://github.com/CUTR-at-USF/gtfs-realtime-validator).  These new tools and standards will help reduce the time needed to develop, test, deploy, and maintain GTFS and GTFS-realtime feeds, which will in turn lead to better quality real-time information for transit riders and better operational and analytics information for transit agencies going forward. The presentation will also discuss the challenges and experiences faced by moovel as a vendor in working with agency data to meet modern, customer expectations in delivering accurate, real-time transportation data.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Understanding of how customer expectations shape the delivery of information/data
• Understanding of how transit agencies and their vendors can follow GTFS Best Practices and use the new GTFS-realtime v2.0 specification when implementing and maintaining data feeds, including putting in RFP requirements
• Challenges of working with multiple transportation providers to provide accurate real-time information
• Lessons learned from numerous focus groups and feedback studies
• Learn how to run the GTFS-realtime Validator tool on data regularly to maintain high-quality feeds
• Where the future of smart apps will take us and how we need to prepare for it

REGISTER TO WATCH ONLINE

SPEAKERS

Sean Barbeau, University of South Florida

Sean Barbeau is the Principal Mobile Software Architect for R&D in CUTR at the University of South Florida. He is part of the CUTR Transportation Demand Management group, and leads a group of software engineers in its Location-Aware Information Systems lab to create prototype location-based services and intelligent mobile apps as part of government and industry-sponsored research. His research interests include intelligent location-based services for cell phones, lightweight data communication frameworks for mobile devices, and mobile application optimization to conserve battery life.

Derek Fretheim, Moovel

As the Director of Business Development at moovel North America, Derek is responsible for building and strengthening partnerships with third party service providers, transportation network companies and various mobility providers. Additionally, Derek is instrumental in moovel’s MaaS strategy, Smart Cities initiatives and developing strategies to expand reach of moovel products and services including moovel’s On-Demand microtransit platform. Prior to joining moovel, Derek maintained a successful consulting practice, working with cities and transit agencies to develop customer technology plans and implementations within the transportation space. A champion of customer facing solutions, Derek has pioneered mobility hub development strategies for the City of Los Angeles, developed multimodal trip planners and digital wayfinding, managed real-time traffic initiatives, on-demand microtransit services and more. Derek has likewise launched bike share, EV car share programs and secured over $250M in grant funding for a variety of clients. He started his career in transportation at the Orange County Transportation Authority in 1990.

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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WATCH THE RECORDED VIDEO

This free webinar is hosted by TREC in partnership with the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association (OAPA).

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss the webinar or want to take another look? You can view the presentation slides here.

OVERVIEW

This webinar will provide practical tools for designing effective and authentic community engagement for transportation projects. Too often, we can forget to ask ourselves who, what and why for our engagement processes.  Authentic community engagement requires us to think through exactly why we need to involve the public, how they can influence project decisions and who the most impacted people may be.  This session will walk you through the steps to plan a unique engagement approach for each project and share examples of what can happen when these tools are used correctly and what can go wrong when they are not.

KEY LEARNING TAKEAWAYS

These three important steps will make your community engagement more authentic and effective:

• Identifying your audience. This is the first step because you can’t know how to reach people until you know which people you want to reach.
• Developing goals and a strategy. You need a clear goal for your outreach. Understand why you need engagement and how that engagement will (or won’t) impact upcoming decisions, and use that to build a goal for what you want to achieve with your outreach. Your strategy is just a plan for activities to achieve your goal(s).
• Meeting people where they are. Once you understand who you want to engage, why you are engaging them and how what you learn will be part of the decision-making process, you are ready to plan some activities/events. Understand your audience and figure out how to engage them the way they want to be engagement. This will make your activities most successful. Engagement should be easy, comfortable, safe, and if possible, fun.

SPEAKERS

Eryn Deeming Kehe, AICP; Senior Communications Specialist, Metro

Since 1999, Eryn Kehe has served as a liaison between government agencies and the people they serve. Ms. Kehe has extensive experience facilitating small groups, large events and collaboration between public agencies. She brings a strong passion for working with divergent groups through collaborative processes. She has designed and implemented public involvement and outreach programs for numerous visioning, land use, redevelopment/urban renewal and transportation projects in Oregon, Washington and California. Eryn earned her Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has served on the National Planning Accreditation Board and is a Board member for the Carleton College Alumni Annual Fund. She has volunteered as a mediator with Resolutions Northwest and Clackamas County Small Claims Court.

Wendy Serrano, Trimet 

Raised in Guadalajara, Mexico, Wendy is bilingual and bicultural. She immigrated to Milwaukie, Oregon with her family as an 11 year old, having to learn English and adjust to a different community structure. Wendy is passionate about advocacy and community engagement of underrepresented groups and has worked in Oregon over the last decade with various nonprofits, government leaders and public agencies in efforts to engage Latino and immigrant community groups in policy planning/implementation, education, economic development, affordable housing and transportation efforts. Wendy earned her Bachelor’s in Communication Studies at Portland State University and a Master’s in Business Administration from George Fox University. She serves as a board commissioner for Home Forward (formerly known as the Housing Authority of Portland).

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.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. With over 450 seminars presented and recorded (access the archive of seminars here), we host both visiting and local scholars to share the latest in research, technology, and implementation in transportation.

WATCH THE RECORDED VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss this seminar or want a look back? You can view the presentation slides here.

EVENT OVERVIEW

There is an active debate about the potential costs and benefits of emerging “smart mobility” systems, especially in how they will serve communities already facing transportation challenges. This presentation will describe the results of an assessment of these equity impacts in the context of lower-income areas of Portland, Oregon, based on a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research.

Portland, Oregon’s proposal for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, “Ubiquitous Mobility for Portland,” focuses on developing mobility solutions that would serve traditionally underserved populations (low-income, communities of color, and residents with mobility challenges). This study found that by lowering costs and improving service for public transit, ridesharing and active transportation, smart mobility systems could address many of the needs of transportation disadvantaged communities. Significant barriers exist, however, which prevent smart mobility technologies from benefiting all communities. For example, lower income survey respondents and respondents of color had significantly lower access to drivers’ licenses, bank accounts and credit cards, and also rely more heavily on paying cash for transit tickets. Lower income respondents and respondents of color had lower access to Internet at home and work and were more likely to reduce data use or cancel cell plans because of cost or data restrictions. Respondents were also concerned about information security, as the impacts of loss or theft, especially identify theft, can be devastating for lower-income residents.

Since integrating payment systems and relying on Internet and cell data for mobile applications is a core feature of smart mobility systems, these disparities are significant barriers to the equitable transition to smart mobility. Policy recommendations to address equity include expanding free and public WiFi, better real-time transit information, improved training, and language translation for phone applications, among other things.

REGISTER TO WATCH ONLINE

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• An overview of smart mobility solutions;
• An understanding of the existing barriers that currently prevent these smart mobility solutions from benefiting all communities;
• Specific recommendations to address and overcome these barriers.

THE RESEARCH

This seminar is based on research "Community-Based Assessment of Smart Transportation Needs in the City of Portland" funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC). Read about the project here.

SPEAKERS

Aaron Golub, Portland State University

Aaron Golub is an associate professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University (PSU), moving to PSU after eight years at Arizona State University and ten years studying and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work focuses on the social contexts of urban transportation systems, explored in three ways: 1. the effects on social equity of current transportation planning practices – how people participate in planning, and who wins and loses from transportation plans, 2. planning, research and advocacy in support of alternatives to the automobile (especially public transportation and bicycles), and 3. the historical roots of automobile dependence in the United States. At PSU, Dr. Golub teaches courses on urban transportation policy, planning research methods, transportation finance and public transportation.

Vivian Satterfield,  Verde

Vivian Satterfield is a community organizer and policy shaper using a racial justice lens at the intersections of transportation, housing and health. She works as the VP of research for Verde Northwest, and prior to that she was deputy director of OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, a community organizing and advocacy organization working with low-income and communities of color to educate, engage and empower.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar 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 receive monthly updates.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. With over 450 seminars presented and recorded (access the archive of seminars here), we host both visiting and local scholars to share the latest in research, technology, and implementation in transportation.

WATCH THE RECORDED VIDEO

PRESENTATION SLIDES

Miss this seminar or want a look back? You can view the presentation slides here.

EVENT OVERVIEW

In heavy-vehicles (a truck with a gross vehicle weight rating of greater than 10,000 pounds), a hard braking event is described as an event that prompts the vehicle’s “black box” to record an abrupt change in speed. More specifically, this occurs when the driver applies excess force to the vehicle’s brake. These hard braking events can then serve as a proxy for several factors, such as economic impacts, environmental impacts, and impacts on safety. In the context of the present study, being that approximately one-third of all heavy-vehicle-caused crashes in 2014 were attributed to faulty brakes, there is a need to better understand heavy-vehicle hard braking and its impact on safety for all highway users. Therefore, the current study utilizes a previously unused freight data source to identify statistically significant heavy-vehicle hard braking hot spots.

Upon merging several datasets, crash data is spatially joined to the hard braking hot spots to conduct a crash frequency analysis of the four crash types that occurred most often: rear-end crashes, turning movement crashes, fixed-object crashes, and sideswipe (overtaking) crashes. Applying advanced statistical and econometric methods, a set of random parameters models and a set of spatial lag models were fit to determine if accounting for unobserved heterogeneity or spatial correlation provides better parameter estimates, overall model fit, and higher prediction rate of crash frequencies for crashes at heavy-vehicle hard braking hot spots. Results show that several exposure-based variables impact the expected number of crashes, such as traffic volume, roadway characteristics, posted limits, etc. In terms of the preferred modeling framework, the spatial lag models provided a slightly better overall fit and correctly predicted more crash counts for the given datasets. This suggests that transportation agencies and safety practitioners should explore the impact of spatial correlation (as well as unobserved heterogeneity) when conducting safety analyses and generating specific safety performance functions.

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KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Hard braking can serve as a proxy for several factors, one of which is safety.
• Address the data limitation of unobserved heterogeneity.
• Address the data limitation of spatial correlation.
• Identified factors and methodologies can be used by ODOT to develop specific mitigation strategies and better predict crash frequency, respectively.

SPEAKER

Jason Anderson, Oregon State University

Jason C. Anderson is a recent Ph.D. graduate from Oregon State University. Jason's research focuses on the application of advanced statistical and econometric methods to answer unique research questions and develop solutions to engineering problems. In recent studies, the primary focus of these methods has been on transportation safety and user perceptions. In his spare time, Jason is an avid sports fan - he doesn't miss a Kings game or a NASCAR race.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar 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 receive monthly updates.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. With over 450 seminars presented and recorded (access the archive of seminars here), we host both visiting and local scholars to share the latest in research, technology, and implementation in transportation.

EDUCATION LIBRARY ARCHIVE

Missed the seminar or want a look back? 

• Watch the recorded video
• View the presentation slides

EVENT OVERVIEW

How can we encourage people to make use of the transportation systems in place - to improve transit ridership and, in turn, to improve the health and happiness of our societies?

New findings in behavioral science could unlock new, more effective ways to change transportation behavior...but only if we have a way to find and use that evidence. TransLink (Vancouver BC) undertook a groundbreaking research effort to use cognitive biases to explain why people drive today, and and to identify possible "nudge" strategies to shift those trips to transit and active modes. The resulting report includes brand-new ideas that area ready to be tested by practitioners. Join us to learn about how academics and practitioners can join forces to create mode shift programs that work.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Understand basic concepts of behavioral science and how they relate to travel behavior
• Learn about promising ideas from behavioral science that may help increase transit and active transportation use
• Discuss how these ideas might be put to use in existing and future programs

SPEAKERS

Jessica Roberts, Alta Planning + Design

Jessica directs behavior change campaigns to help people walk, bicycle, and take transit more often. She specializes in education, promotion, and marketing programs, including SmartTrips (individualized marketing) programs, Safe Routes to School programs, and Transportation Demand Management. Over the last ten years, programs under her direction have reached over 200,000 people across North America. Her current research interest is connecting behavioral science to transportation mode shift.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar 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 receive monthly updates.

EDUCATION LIBRARY ARCHIVE

Missed the webinar or want a look back? 

• Watch the recorded video
• View the presentation slides

OVERVIEW

There is nationwide interest in supporting sustainable and active transportation modes such as bicycling and walking due to the many benefits associated with them, including reduced congestion, lower emissions and improved health. Although the number of bicyclists is increasing, safety remains a top concern. In urban areas, a common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. While geometric treatments and pavement markings have been studied, there is a lack of research on signal timing treatments to address right-hook bicycle-vehicle conflicts.

Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts with Alternate Signal Control Strategies, published in April 2018, is the first study to explore bicycle signal control strategies for addressing bicycle-vehicle conflicts. This study analyzed the operational impacts of traditional concurrent phasing, leading bike intervals (LBI), split leading bike intervals, and exclusive bike phasing in a microsimulation environment, and explored the safety impacts of traditional concurrent phasing, leading bike intervals, split leading bike intervals, and mixing zones using video-based conflict analysis. The microsimulation analysis revealed increased delays due to LBI, split LBI and exclusive bike phasing for the affected motor vehicle phases compared to traditional concurrent phasing. Using post-encroachment time (PET), a surrogate safety measure, conflicts between turning vehicles and bicyclists were investigated. While the split LBI treatment was useful in mitigating conflicts during the lead interval, the risk for bicyclists is shifted to the stale green portion of the phase. No correlations were found between the frequency of conflicts and elapsed time since green. With the mixing zone treatment, significant confusion was exhibited by both cyclists and drivers, with respect to the correct action to be taken.

Observation also revealed that a significant percentage of the vehicles merged into the mixing zone at the very last second, thus adding to the confusion. This study provides broad-based recommendations on the appropriate treatment to be implemented to reduce right-hook conflicts.

KEY LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Add bicycle–focused signal timing strategies to your toolbox;
• Learn the best signal strategies to promote bicycle safety for different intersection types;
• Identify specific signal timing strategies to reduce "right hook" conflicts between bicyclists and turning vehicles.

SPEAKER

Sirisha Kothuri, Portland State University

Sirisha Kothuri, Ph.D. is a senior research associate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Portland State University. Dr. Kothuri’s primary research interests are in the areas of multimodal traffic operations, bicycle and pedestrian counting, and safety. Dr. Kothuri is the research co-chair of the Transportation Research Board’s Pedestrians Committee (ANF10) and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Data Subcommittee (ABJ 35(3)) and a member of Traffic Signal Systems committee. Dr. Kothuri received her BCE from Osmania University, India, MSCE from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge and Ph.D. from Portland State University.

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.

Friday Transportation Seminars at Portland State University have been a tradition since 2000. With the start of 2019, we're changing it up a bit! The seminar will be delivered 11:30 am (sharp) - 12:30 pm, with additional discussion over coffee and donuts afterwards. You can also watch online.

Periodically, we're teaming up with the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) to bring you special editions—featuring guest speakers from PBOT—merging our seminar series and the long-standing PBOT Lunch & Learn.

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

Miss the seminar or want a look back?

• Watch the recorded video
• View the presentation slides

THE TOPIC (PBOT EDITION)

Portland's neighborhood greenways are a key component of the city's transportation system and future. Join PBOT's new neighborhood greenway coordinator to learn how this facility type developed, near-term plans for improvements, and what the future holds for these unique bikeways.

KEY LEARNING TAKEAWAYS

Participants will gain a better understanding of: 

• The history of Portland's neighborhood greenways
• PBOT's evaluation process for the neighborhood greenway system
• Where the system is thriving and where PBOT sees deficiencies
• How PBOT plans to address the system's development over the next three to five years

SPEAKER

Scott Cohen, Neighborhood Greenways and Bikeway Missing Links Coordinator, PBOT

Scott Cohen is the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation's (PBOT) neighborhood greenway coordinator, managing how the city's 90-plus mile system operates and develops. Scott recently transitioned from capital project management to his new role. During his 12 years at PBOT, Scott has worked on a wide variety of active transportation programs including transportation and parking demand management initiatives and the Central City in Motion effort.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This 60-minute seminar 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 receive monthly updates.

Photo Credit: Cait McCusker, Portland State University

The City of Portland Bureau of Transportation is a community partner in shaping a livable city. They plan, build, manage and maintain an effective and safe transportation system that provides people and businesses access and mobility. PBOT keeps Portland moving.

 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.