Incorporating transportation into the land development process is a big undertaking, with many important angles to be considered. Researchers are translating NITC research on this theme into a popular, easy-to-understand graphic format: comics. Led by an interdisciplinary team at Portland State University and the University of Arizona, they're illustrating transportation considerations in the land development process as a comic to reach a broader audience on this critical topic. 

Related: Read about the NITC Research Roadmap on Transportation and Land Use.

Still in development (the images here are early working drafts, illustrated by PSU student Joaquin Golez and Portland, OR illustrator Ryan Alexander-Tanner), the comics are based on research findings from several projects funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC). The project team is working with readers at neighborhood associations and nonprofits to test this unique approach in sharing research findings. We interviewed three of the project team members Kelly Clifton of PSU, Ryan Alexander-Tanner and Susan Kirtley of PSU to hear how it's going.

Can you share more about your body of research on transportation and land use that sparked the idea for this comics project?

Kelly Clifton

I first started thinking about how we can better coordinate land development and transportation when I was doing my dissertation in the late 90s, but I didn't really have an occasion to do any funded research until I came to Portland in 2010. My very first project on this topic was funded by our U.S. DOT-supported program NITC and Metro, our regional body that governs transportation and land. We looked at system development charges because we wanted to know whether the different communities within our region were headed to more auto oriented built environments or not. At the time, Kristi [Currans] was a Masters student at PSU and she did her thesis on this topic. Lucky for me, she stayed on and did her PhD with me. Since then we’ve done five or six projects together, maybe more! Notably we did a big project for CalTrans looking at these questions for affordable housing and impacts on residents. We’ve done a lot of work with the City of Portland, revamping how they're coordinating transportation and land development. More recently, we’ve started looking at how we account for scooters and uber and rideshare and all of these new transportation options.

What unique strengths do project team members bring to this project?

Kelly Clifton

Kristi and I are bringing the technical know-how of transportation and land use, but I’ve always been interested in interdisciplinary projects and combining different talents to tackle a problem. Susan is coming from English and directing PSU’s comic studies program, and Ryan is a local professional comic artist and illustrator. And then we have a Master of Fine Arts student who's going to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of the artwork.

Ryan Alexander-Tanner

This is very much in line with my body of work in comics. Earlier in my career, Columbia University hired me to illustrate a book on teaching, and after working closely with the author for over a year I internalized the core message of being a student of your students. I learned how to take in a lot of information and reinterpret it into this accessible medium of comics, and that project helped me create a process for myself. In our informal sessions together I’m repackaging Kelly and Kristi’s expertise combined with Susan’s background as an academic in comics. I enjoy the role of mediating the collaborative process. 

Susan Kirtley

As Ryan mentioned, I’m coming at this as a comics scholar. I’ve done research in comics history and I bring with me this interest in visual rhetoric, and I've been very passionate about the potential for comics pedagogy –teaching with and through comics. I feel very strongly that comics have unique potential to inform and educate and entertain, so that's always something that appeals to me. This project is particularly appealing in that I get to learn all kinds of cool stuff, but also think more about that process of how do we teach with comics?

Kelly Clifton

Normally when I'm doing a research project I have an idea, and although we don't know what the outcome is going to be, we do know what the process is going to be. But I’ve never made a comic before, and I don’t know the process. Susan and Ryan offer these checks and balances, and I think everyone's learning something new through this project, which is, I think, really cool.

What do you see as barriers to communicating research? 

Kelly Clifton

The first barrier is academic training. We're not really trained on how to talk to a broader audience. We’re very much taught how to talk to each other, to be very cautious in the language we use, and to not over generalize. I’m always very reserved about overstating the implications of work, which is important - but, how can we strike a balance to reach a general audience? Another barrier is retraining my brain. How do you tell a story without all the inherent complexity in research? And how do you adjust based on your audience, which could be academics, decision makers in policy and practice, students, and then the general public? There is no one way to communicate that would hit all those groups.

Susan Kirtley

As academics we are encouraged to talk amongst ourselves, to publish in peer-reviewed scholarly journals in the insular university press world. Not only is it what we’re encouraged to do, it’s also how we’re valued and evaluated in terms of our performance and consideration for tenure. There's a lot of great research that's happening, but it’s not necessarily being shared with a wider audience. How can that form of communication be incentivized to change the norm?

Why do you think it is so important for universities to communicate research findings in new innovative ways like comics?

Ryan Alexander-Tanner 

I'm hearing this over and over in my work for universities and in the public health field. They say ‘we're insulated, and we do all this work and nobody reads it, no one engages with it.’ And while I don't think comics are the only method, I do think they're an effective method. We're in this media bombardment era where you're getting slammed with articles, podcasts, talks all the time. It’s hard to break through the noise.

Susan Kirtley

Working with students we talk a lot about going to the source of the information and why that's important, particularly in an era where there's so much misinformation. The expert tells the journalist, and then the journalist tells someone else, and then Buzzfeed picks it up. By the time it gets to that point it's lost the original focus and findings. With Kelly and Kristi, we have the opportunity to tap into the expert source right here and bring it to life with visuals.

Kelly Clifton

Universities really are challenged now, and research in particular, to prove their value to the public. What is the value of a university education, not just to the individual, but to society? A shift to prioritizing communicating your work more broadly is about getting the information out there, but also it’s just showing what we do at universities and how it can have an impact beyond just academia.

What is unique about comics as a medium? What does it have to offer that other mediums do not? Would you agree that comics offer a form of education that suits different learning styles?

Ryan Alexander-Tanner

Yes, absolutely. There is a type of learner that comics are their ideal medium. More important though is distilling your message down to the main idea. Like, what is the point of sharing that message? I don't think the medium is as important as the message itself. But there are many people that wouldn't read a research article, but would read a comic about research. The pairing of text and image is really effective. It can activate multiple parts of your brain. And the concise nature of language in comics lends itself to focusing on the main message. Comics can also break up information into bite-size pieces, and even if you’re stringing them together into something that's long…it just makes it more accessible. Integrating that creative element into something that's academic or factual is powerful. In a way, showing rather than telling is also an economical use of the learner’s time.

Susan Kirtley

I agree with all of that. You can do things with comic art that you can’t do with any other medium. The interplay of text and art together makes it unique, but also particularly well suited to an educational environment. Some folks are visual learners, and comics appeal to them. Comics invites the reader in and makes it interactive. Comics creator Scott McCloud talks about this, between the panels, the reader has to take this really active stance to interpreting and understanding the progression in the gaps between panels. Comics ask us to engage in the story in a way that no other medium does. There are so many unique things about comics that make them particularly well suited for communicating.

Ryan Alexander-Tanner

In the past, a lot of time has been spent trying to validate comics. We’re in a good place now where it’s generally accepted that comics are fun to read and an effective way to communicate. I’ve heard many times things like, ‘You know I had to read 15 books last semester, and your book stood out because it was a comic book and more engaging to read.’

Kelly Clifton

My biggest motivation was to get this out to a completely different audience. If policymakers or transportation students want to read the comic, great! But I really want community and advocacy organizations, the public to be engaged by this format.

What are you hoping to accomplish by communicating transportation land use research through comics? Who is your target audience?

Kelly Clifton

We have two test reader groups that we’ve arranged. One through a Portland neighborhood association and another through Tucson’s Living Streets Alliance who works closely with the Latin community there. And that's exactly who my target audience is: people who are not subject matter experts on transportation and land use, but they experience the impacts on a daily basis. Everybody understands sitting in traffic. Everybody understands getting cut off by someone while you're riding your bike. Everybody understands the challenges of walking on unimproved roads with no sidewalks. But what they might not understand is how do things get this way? More importantly, how do we advocate for change?

What aspect of this project are you most excited about? What do you expect to be most challenging?

Kelly Clifton

What’s most exciting for me is learning new things every time the team gets together. It’s my favorite part of the week! Maybe when the comic is done, it will be anti-climactic because the process itself has been so exciting.

Susan Kirtley

I would agree with you Kelly, I love learning new things, and so this process of translation between research and comics has been so much fun. As a teacher I can’t help but think ‘Ooh this is something I could talk about in class’ or ‘I could do an activity related to what we're doing’. 

Ryan Alexander-Tanner

It’s the collaboration for me. We’ve been approaching this as very non hierarchical, and learning a lot from each other. One thing that's very exciting is creating this opportunity for our student artist, Joaquin Golez. A lot of my work as a teacher has been trying to provide opportunities for students interested in comics that I didn't have access to when I was in college. If there had been an opportunity like this, when I was in school, it would have changed my life. Something that is both exciting and challenging is we're going to have to let go and support our student in taking the reins. Seeing their creative interpretation of all the stuff we put together - that's thrilling to me.

Can you share anything about what you’ve developed so far, and any similar initiatives at PSU?

Kelly Clifton

We’ve been in the thick, messy part of it. I’ve just been tossing research findings at them and then they've been grabbing it and throwing it back at me. Sort of playing hot potato, like: what's the structure of this going to look like? How are we going to fit the narrative into that structure? After the comic is published we’ll also do a workshop in the fall at Portland State to talk about this process and the power of comics to communicate research.

Ryan Alexander-Tanner

We are hoping to have a completed comic by the end of summer. We’re making a printed comic book and it's going to consist of three articles which will all be available on the web too.

Susan Kirtley

This project speaks to the potential of Portland State. We have really strong faculty doing interesting research, and we also have the Comic Studies program. Portland has so many amazing local creators like Ryan, so I think this project speaks to this intersection of comics and academics while tapping into the city’s resources as a hub of comics. Moreover, we have amazing students who can create them!

COMICS COMING IN 2022

Want to be notified when the comics are published later this year? Add your email address here!

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE UPCOMING WORKSHOP AT PSU THIS FALL:

USP/WR 407/507 RESEARCH INTO COMICS
Dr. Kacy McKinney and Ryan Alexander-Tanner
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12-1:50pm

Students in this class will explore comics as a deeply engaging medium for communicating complex stories and research findings. Students will learn about comics theory and gain hands-on experience in processes of collaborative research and comics creation. Offering a range of approaches to both research and comics creation, students of the social sciences, arts and humanities, the natural sciences, and professional fields will all gain important skills for communicating research to wide audiences. No prior experience with comics creation or drawing skills necessary.

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

Would monetary incentives encourage more people to buy e-bikes? 

Portland State University (PSU) researchers are examining how purchase incentive programs can expand the current e-bike market, and the latest product to come out of this research is a white paper released earlier this month: “Using E-Bike Purchase Incentive Programs to Expand the Market – North American Trends and Recommended Practices (PDF)”

The paper offers methods of identifying the most effective program structure for the incentive provider's priorities, and helpful information on how to administer and track the program. 

A great number of cities in the United States have cycling goals, and a great way to address those is by promoting e-bikes, because they provide for a much wider range of users than a traditional bike does," said Cameron Bennett, who is a master student in transportation engineering at PSU.

Bennett co-authored the paper with John MacArthur of PSU; Christopher Cherry of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; and Luke Jones of Valdosta State University. The authors reviewed impacts and statistics from around 75 current, past, and proposed e-bike incentive programs in North America, and also interviewed industry leaders, academics and incentive program managers to identify key considerations. Streetsblog USA interviewed MacArthur on what the team found and the implications for program administrators.

Funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and PeopleForBikes, the multi-part research project has three stages:

1. Tracking current and proposed e-bike incentive programs in North America (for more on that, see our Jan 2022 story or see the live online tracker spreadsheet);
2. Evaluating practices, trends and case studies in those programs (download the white paper or watch the May 2022 webinar);
3. Learning more about potential e-bike buyers and how incentive programs could influence their decision-making.

Later this year the team will publish the results of a national stated preference survey (take the survey here), aimed at learning the potential effects of different rebate methods, cash amounts, demographics and other factors. This will yield even more insight into what affects people's decision-making, and which types of incentive programs may hit the sweet spot.

John MacArthur has a long track record in e-bike research, and he and Christopher Cherry collaborate on research for the Light Electric Vehicle Education and Research (LEVER) Institute.

Photo by Dongho Chang

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.

Better Block PSU is a partnership program between the volunteer-led group Better Block PDX and Portland State University - encouraging everyone to imagine what spaces could be when they are designed for people. Once a year, community members submit their project ideas to the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at PSU. Selected projects are then integrated into a pathway of PSU planning and engineering classes, through which students gain hands-on experiential learning by developing plans, designs, and engineering solutions. 

Students in PSU's Pedestrian and Bicycle Planning course, taught by Drusilla van Hengel, are currently working on the newest slate of projects. The course seeks to provide each project partner with an evaluation of each site's level of pedestrian and bicycle activity and existing conditions, a community engagement plan, and performance metric recommendations for uses during the demonstration to measure the project's success. Those five community-led projects include:

• Argay Terrace Transformation: This project seeks to transform the intersection of NE 131st and NE Prescott Dr from a dangerous corner into a welcoming neighborhood space, in a community which is 47 percent Black, Indigenous and people of color.
• Car Free Zones in Downtown Portland: In 1972, Portland City Planners and the City Council approved a car-free plan for the downtown. Parts of it were implemented in the Waterfront Trail and Halprin Open Space Sequence, and this project seeks to update and operationalize the rest of the Car-Free Downtown Plan (see page 33 of the 1972 Portland Downtown Plan).
• Keaton Otis Memorial: This project seeks to create a safe space for community members to gather at a memorial, with a street design that reduces or eliminates car traffic at the gathering space.
• Sabin Outdoor Community Space: This project would convert a dead-end cul de sac near a future affordable housing development into a pleasant, functional outdoor space that can be easily navigated by foot, bike or wheelchair.
• Walkable Rosewood: This project would improve the pedestrian experience along several streets in the Rosewood neighborhood with temporary or permanent walkways, intersection treatments, and art installations.

Below we share summaries from the proposals of the chosen projects. These are initial ideas and aspirations, and what is pursued by the project partners and the PSU student teams will evolve and change over time, depending upon the goals and constraints of the class working closely with community partners. Later this year we’ll share an update on the progress and accomplishments of each project team. Want to be notified when applications open in Spring 2023? Add your email address here, and learn more about the Better Block PSU program here.

Argay Terrace Transformation

Led by the Argay Terrace Neighborhood Association, this project seeks to transform the intersection of NE 131st and NE Prescott Dr from a dangerous corner into a welcoming neighborhood space, in an area of the neighborhood that has the most racially diverse residents.

The Opportunity

The intersection is a mix of commercial and residential uses, with a large multifamily housing development and a thriving indoor soccer league nearby. Kids walking to Shaver Elementary School must cross the street here, amid an environment that has been the site for illegal dumping of trash and other illegal activity. The community is 49% people of color, and many residents are below the median household income for Portland. This project is an opportunity to improve the intersection and make it into a safer, more welcoming space for residents.

How to Move Forward

The project partners have several ideas on how to potentially improve the area, including: 

• An improvised bike lane to help kids feel safer riding bikes or scooters to school;
• Planters and other street furniture to help the area look and feel cared for;
• A street painting to illustrate the transition between commercial and residential zones;
• Other treatments that make it feel safer to walk and roll in the area.

What Does Success Look Like?

"We are a community that loves to walk to our gorgeous parks (Luuwit View and Argay). We are a neighborhood where people walk their dogs and say 'hi.'  We are a neighborhood where kids ride their bikes despite no bike infrastructure. We have farm fields that produce fresh flowers and vegetables as well as a thriving community garden in Luuwit View Park. That is our community. Loved by those who live here and well used," shared the Parks Chair for the Argay Terrace Neighborhood Association. A successful project would result in a transformation: from a dangerous corner to an area that is cared for by the community; a space where people are welcomed into the neighborhood. Success would be measured by the quality of interaction in the project with Black, Indigenous and People of Color; by an increase in resources to the area of the neighborhood that is most diverse; and finally by the sight of more people walking and riding to school and Luuwit View park from NE Prescott Dr.

Car Free Zones in Downtown Portland

Led by Urban Design & Planning Consultant Cathy Tuttle, this project will work to update and operationalize the 1972 Car-Free Downtown Portland Plan. 

The Opportunity

Downtown Portland is very car-focused, as Cathy Tuttle explained in a recent Friday Transportation Seminar at Portland State. The area has a good transit grid with light rail, buses and streetcar transit, and fairly short blocks that already have good street lighting and pavement. With the implementation of car-free zones, there is the potential to create vibrant and welcoming thoroughfares for pedestrians and bicyclists, boosting commercial activity and contributing to a healthier city through lowered emissions and increased opportunities for physical activity. Portland's Downtown Car-Free Plan (PDF) was approved by planners and the City Council in 1972. Parts of the plan have been implemented in the Waterfront Trail and Halprin Open Space Sequence. This project seeks to move forward with realizing more of the original vision for Portland's car-free downtown. 

How to Move Forward

By moving this project through the Better Block PSU program, the conversation about Portland's car-free downtown can be pushed forward on multiple fronts. The PSU students could potentially contribute by:

• Defining the geographic scope of the car-free zone;
• Creating a timeline and prioritizing which streets to work on first;
• Thinking ahead about how to facilitate cargo bike and other low-carbon freight deliveries;
• Planning for utility access and emergency vehicle access;
• Identifying pricing strategies to collect revenue from limited car entry and parking;
• Securing the relevant environmental permits;
• Determining what metrics would most accurately evaluate success.

What Does Success Look Like?

A successful project would result in livable, equitable streets for people of all ages and abilities in downtown Portland. Success could be measured and quantified in terms of improving air quality, reducing noise, lowering overall CO2 emissions and increasing revenue for local businesses. Engaging with vulnerable community members would also be an essential component of a successful project. "Many people who live and work in Portland do not drive. In fact, 40% of people do not drive citywide because cars are not affordable, because of age or disability, or because of choice. Downtown Portland has a very high concentration of very low income, BIPOC, and other-abled people who need to be part of this planning process," project lead Cathy Tuttle said.

Keaton Otis Memorial

Led by Joshua Baker of Justice for Keaton Otis, this project seeks to create a safe space for community members to gather at a memorial, with a street design that reduces or eliminates car traffic at the gathering space.

The Opportunity

On May 12, 2010, 25-year-old Keaton Otis's life was cut short by Portland Police. At the site where it happened, on Northeast 6th Avenue between Clackamas and Halsey, loved ones and activists of Keaton Otis have met on the street for the past 10+ years for a monthly vigil. Plans are underway to create a permanent memorial. The southern part of the block would be connected to Portland's planned "Green Loop."

How to Move Forward

Project leaders have organized the design vision into a few phases and are seeking funding for moving forward all three phases. All currently planned memorial components either involve work on the sidewalk or a special kintsugi-style street artwork. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold. One key component that has not yet been addressed, and where Better Block PSU may be able to help, is: What can be done to reduce (or completely eliminate) vehicle traffic along the block, and turn it into a safe space for community members to gather?

What Does Success Look Like?

"This project is based on over a decade of deep community engagement and three years of collective visioning efforts to meaningfully memorialize the life of Keaton Otis. We see it as a model of what community-driven transformative justice could look like," project lead Joshua Baker said. Justice for Keaton Otis is the name of the organization leading the effort. Their hope is that Keaton’s loved ones, and all those fighting for justice, feel a sense of togetherness in this place. Reducing the noise and danger of car traffic at the site would contribute meaningfully to the feeling of safety and acknowledgement.

Sabin Outdoor Community Space

Led by Elizabeth A. Caston, a NE resident and consultant for the Sabin CDC nonprofit, this project would convert a dead-end cul de sac near a future affordable housing development into a pleasant, functional outdoor space that can be easily navigated by foot, bike or wheelchair.

The Opportunity

In the 1970s, the city blocked off the end of NE 14th place to Killingsworth, which resulted in a cul de sac that dead-ends. The Sabin Community Development Corporation is currently building a new 29-unit low income affordable housing complex that will include an indoor community arts and culture center on the ground floor directly adjacent to this cul-de-sac. At this location there is no crosswalk and there are many obstructions on the sidewalk and sidewalk ramps, impeding access and making it a difficult area to navigate by foot, bike or wheelchair.

How to Move Forward

This outdoor site area has been discussed as a potential community gathering and event space. Improving the space could offer potential benefits to the incoming low-income residents as well as the larger community. Sabin has already done a few rounds of resident outreach and engagement on what they would like to see in a Resident and Community Services program, and will be engaging many more times to help prioritize, vision, and plan for more specifics. Better Block PSU could help by:

• Planning for better bike and pedestrian access to and from nearby Alberta and Ainsworth;
• Engaging further with community members to ensure their voices are heard;
• Designing strategies to turn the cul de sac into a parklet or other outdoor community space.

What Does Success Look Like?

The end result would be a new space for community members to gather that is safe, comfortable, and easy to access, as well as providing safe connections to the rest of the neighborhood. "Having access to pleasant, functional outdoor public space would be the catalyst for this amazing opportunity in community empowerment and engagement. Using outdoor space to create intergenerational connections, and strengthen community socialization between families with kids/youth, and with seniors, and the disabled who are often isolated and lonely. We want to bring people together for community building," project lead Elizabeth Caston said.

Walkable Rosewood

Led by Oregon Walks, this project would improve the pedestrian experience along several streets in the Rosewood neighborhood with temporary or permanent walkways, intersection treatments, and art installations.

The Opportunity

There are no sidewalks along many streets throughout East Portland's Rosewood neighborhood. The lack of sidewalk availability, coupled with the large street blocks and distantly spaced crossings, makes it unsafe and uncomfortable for people to walk in many spaces in the neighborhood. There have been two recent plans/projects already developed for the Rosewood neighborhood, each of which includes streetscape improvement ideas:

• Roses From Concrete, a 2020 Masters of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) workshop project, created a walkability plan for the neighborhood. Shreya Jain, the lead on this project, was a member of the graduate student team that worked on this plan.
• The Rosewood Conceptual Neighborhood Master Plan was developed in 2021 through a partnership with the Rosewood Initiative and SERA Architects. 

How to Move Forward

The desired outcome is a project shaped by Rosewood community members that would make it safer and more enjoyable to walk in the area. Oregon Walks hopes to partner with local transportation advocacy organizations to develop a community engagement strategy focusing on Rosewood’s residents. Better Block PSU could help by prioritizing which intersections and streets could be effectively improved with temporary or permanent walkways, intersection treatments, and art installations.  

What Does Success Look Like?

"Success could be measured by seeing community members engaged in the process and helping shape the overall design. It could also be measured by seeing youth be involved in the decision-making process," project lead Shreya Jain said. If street improvements end up being implemented, a primary indicator that the project succeeded would be people reporting that they walk more, or that they feel safer or more comfortable walking in the Rosewood neighborhood.

Want to be notified when applications open in Spring 2023? Add your email address here, and learn more about the Better Block PSU program here.

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.

An Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) report, Resilient and Rapid Repair Measures for Seismically Vulnerable Bridges Following Major Earthquakes, introduces a rapid repair method for bridges in the event of a major earthquake.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake threatens bridges across the Pacific Northwest. Damage is expected to be geographically spread throughout the region and will have a nearly simultaneous impact on transportation through several important corridors. While bridge repair and replacement will ultimately be needed, an immediate priority will be resuming mobility. With that in mind, the project team developed a method for repairs to be implemented quickly.

The quick repair involves encasing a damaged bridge column in a steel jacket, which is then anchored to the foundation through replaceable ductile fuse hold-downs. In full-scale cyclic tests, the team applied this repair method to a damanged column and then subjected it to the cyclic loading it would encounter during a Cascadia Subduction Zone event. The experiments validated the design goal, resulting in restored or controlled strength while also exhibiting no additional damage.

The proof-of-concept experiments have shown the potential of this methodology to rapidly repair earthquake-damaged columns with a relatively generic approach.

Led by Peter Dusicka of Portland State University, the research team included AKM Golam Murtuz, Ilya Palnikov and Gregory Norton. Murtuz and Norton are currently graduate research assistants, Palnikov is a structural research engineer, and Dusicka is a professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering. All four team members work in the Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science at Portland State. Dusicka has worked on several other earthquake structural engineering projects, with a focus on infrastructure resilience.

Photo by Cait McCusker

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.

How could a free transportation class for people living in the Salt Lake City region strengthen community conversations and advocacy around local priorities in transportation policy? Researchers at Portland State University (PSU) and University of Utah (UU) explored that question by bringing a well-known learning model from Portland, Oregon to SLC.

For over 25 years, the Portland Bureau of Transportation has partnered with PSU to offer the Portland Traffic and Transportation Course – a free 10-week course designed to provide local community members the skills and knowledge to participate in transportation decisions affecting their neighborhoods. This model has proven to be a success story in public agency-university partnership in community education. Building upon a 2015 project that documented the Portland course and developed a curriculum handbook, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) has provided more funding for a pilot community transportation class–the Wasatch Transportation Academy– in Salt Lake, City Utah. Their first class was held on January 24, 2022 (view class recordings here) and ran through March 28th.

In advance of the research report and updated curriculum handbook*, we interviewed the researchers behind the project, Nathan McNeil of PSU and Keith Bartholomew of UU, to learn more about how this learning model can be adapted to other cities and regions across the country.

*Want to be notified when resources are released for this project? Add your email address here.

Can you share more about the history of this transportation class in Portland and the goals?

NATHAN McNEIL: The City and Portland State have been offering this free “Transportation Academy” for over twenty-five years. There have been over 1,200 alumni. 1,200 community members in Portland who are now more knowledgeable and engaged, with each other and their neighbors, in local transportation projects and improvements. That’s huge.

KEITH BARTHOLOMEW: And who are those people? Leading up to the class we interviewed stakeholders all over the Salt Lake City region, and one of recurring themes is that the vision of this class should prioritize empowering people. Providing the skills, the tools, and the opportunity for confidence for neighbors to share their understanding of transportation planning and how to influence outcomes. In a sense, it's like we are trying to train a bunch of community activists in engaging with their fellow neighbors in vocalizing and realizing their transportation needs.

NATHAN: Yes, and also how to interact with City Council members and sway decision makers. Part of that is coordinating with your neighbors to more effectively communicate those technical needs. How can you walk away from this class as a translator for your neighbors and for other people that maybe haven't sat through those lectures?

KEITH: One of the explicit outcomes of the class is to be able to convince someone. Not just how does transportation planning and engineering projects work, but how to get other people to care about your issue? How can you cultivate a commitment to seek a solution? The most important takeaway from this class is not so much a body of knowledge, but a way of thinking. How can we empower these community members to find the information they need and advocate for the change they want to see?

Why do you think it is so important for regions and universities to partner on hosting community transportation academies for the public?

KEITH: In preparing for the launch of this class, one of our interviewees emphasized that we’re in a time of significant change right now. Electric vehicles, AV, e-scooters, microtransit…these technology changes are all the more exacerbated by the pandemic and climate change. It’s a critical time to be engaging people on ways those changes could improve their community and their access to opportunities. With rapid increases in population growth and cost of living, this community learning model can serve as a tool to respond to those transportation challenges and perhaps provide part of the solution. It’s about community building. The technical stuff on transportation you can read online, watch webinars, etc. But in a class setting you get a different kind of learning: strategizing with other people who share your interests. You can share lessons learned with each other, and experience the energy of others who are similarly motivated to make their communities better. That’s not something you can achieve through a Google search.

NATHAN: There is huge value in building the networks of people that are interested in these topics in your local area, and not just between the people learning in the class. Meeting the people that are making the decisions is powerful. The class can create new relationships and offer that human connection behind transportation infrastructure and policies. The other class members can serve as a sounding board, and the class can be a place for them to test out their ideas around issues and how to engage others.

KEITH: And to see that there are ways to change City Hall, and ways to change how things are done in your neighborhood.

NATHAN: In the end we hope people walk away with the knowledge that technical aspects of transportation are accessible to them, and that behind it all are people who are doing the planning. Decisions do happen on a person to person to person level, for better or worse. And it’s really hard to engage and be a part of the conversation only online.

What unique strengths do Portland State and University of Utah researchers bring to this project?

NATHAN: In 2015 I led a project evaluating the transportation academy class in Portland, and part of that project was developing a curriculum outline and handbook. And so I’m very familiar with this model of learning. There are some variations out there, but the Portland class is unique. Last year NITC offered this nifty new grant geared towards technology transfer, essentially - funding to implement the research. I got lucky when I found out Keith, who is familiar with the Portland class, had already been thinking about how he could bring this model to the Salt Lake City region! Keith has been building relationships with transportation decision-makers and planners in that area for over 23 years, and could help bring this class to reality. He was willing to step in, share those relationships and serve as lead instructor for this first class. The University of Utah was a great partner in this project, and it couldn’t have worked out better.

KEITH: Well right back at you Portland! This kind of project really gets to the roots of NITC. Back when we were first trying to establish a USDOT University Transportation Center here and considering who would be a good partner - Portland and PSU were an obvious choice. Portland and Salt Lake City are more similar than we are different. People love to say there couldn’t be two regions more demographically and politically diametrically opposed. But both public universities have a history of activism and play leading roles in promoting community engagement. For a community class like this to succeed, the educational institute needs to be ingrained in the urban fabric.

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How do you see this class differing from Portland? What is unique about the Wasatch County region in Utah?

NATHAN: I’m sure Keith will have a totally different take on this question, but a major difference is that we envisioned this class to be regional. Bringing in people that don’t necessarily live in Salt Lake City, but in the greater Wasatch Front –both in terms of content and who is present. It’s also important to acknowledge that the Portland class has been going for nearly 30 years and has a long waiting list of people hoping to get in. People get a lot of value from it and recommend it to peers, and neighborhood associations regularly send people to it. Something the Portland class doesn’t have to contend with is marketing, but we started from scratch in Salt Lake and had great support from local and regional transportation agencies in promoting the class. We seemed to have tapped into a bit of latent demand for this type of offering - we ended up with over 100 people expressing interest in the class, 50 applications, and an average attendance of about 30 students per class.

KEITH: There is a pretty strong current of activism in our region already. We wanted to acknowledge and leverage it with this version of the class in the Wasatch Front. Another difference is that this time it’s the university that is initiating the program. University of Utah has a long history of education in public administration, including a historic program started in the 1970’s for planning commissioners across the state to prepare citizens for the challenges of their volunteer jobs. Although the program is no longer active at UU, we still have that curriculum and experience to apply to this class.

Now that the first class has been piloted, what’s next for this project?

NATHAN: Outside of the class itself, there are a few products we’re working on to share our takeaways from the experience of launching this community learning model in the Wasatch Front. We’ll be sharing a case study of the first year, and developing a five year plan of how this particular class could evolve over time. We’ll also be updating the original Community Transportation Academy Curriculum Handbook I wrote back in 2015. It will address the differences of this class in a city versus one with a regional approach, as well as just the experience of having implemented one outside of Portland. What can be generalized to any location versus what might be specific to a city or region? The curriculum will also be updated to share how to address these transportation topics with a focus on equity.

The forthcoming report from “Implementing a Community Transportation Academy” and other products from this research project will be released this summer. If you want to be notified when resources are released for this project, add your email address here.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Implementing a Community Transportation Academy

Nathan McNeil

nmcneil@pdx.edu | Twitter

Nathan McNeil is a Research Associate at Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC). He conducts research on travel behavior, traffic safety, and programs to promote multimodal and equitable transportation. Nathan received a master of urban and regional planning from Portland State University and studied history at Columbia University as an undergraduate. Prior to PSU, Nathan worked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City as a performance auditor where he evaluated capital programs and contractors.

Keith Bartholomew, JD
bartholomew@arch.utah.edu | Website

Keith Bartholomew is the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Utah College of Architecture + Planning and a Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning. Before coming to Utah, Professor Bartholomew served as a staff attorney for 1000 Friends of Oregon and was the director of “Making the Land Use, Transportation, Air Quality Connection” (LUTRAQ). Professor Bartholomew teaches and conducts research on integrated land use-transportation scenario analysis, pedestrian-oriented design, and land use law.

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from Salt Lake City Transportation Division; Wasatch Front Regional Council; Utah Department of Transportation; Utah Transit Authority; University of Utah; and Salt Lake County, Regional Planning and Transportation.

RELATED RESEARCH

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• Transportation Leadership Education
• Collaborative Regional Planning: Tools and Techniques for Teaching Collaborative Regional Planning to Enhance Livability and Sustainable Transportation
• Multimodal Transportation Planning Applications Curriculum for Urban Planning Programs

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

David Yang, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Portland State University, is the principal investigator on two newly-awarded research projects for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in support of its structural engineering programs.

"As the transportation infrastructure continues to age in an ever more uncertain future, it is essential to assess and manage infrastructure risk during the evaluation, maintenance, and rehabilitation processes. These two projects are dedicated to the development of such risk-informed approaches for existing culverts, bridges, and tunnels," Yang said.

In the first project, Framework and Methodology for Risk-Based Bridge and Tunnel Asset Management, an infrastructure team led by Yang with co-PIs Diane Moug, Arash Khosravifar, and Avinash Unnikrishnan will use a three-year grant from the Federal Highway Administration to develop a framework and a methodology for asset management of bridges and tunnels.

Bridges and tunnels need to address the daily transportation needs of the traveling public and provide capacity and emergency service before/during/after extreme events. States may achieve the best possible transportation network performance through a properly planned asset management strategy. This project aims to develop a comprehensive and risk-based methodology that can consider all credible risks and their variations when maintenance and retrofitting actions are selected and implemented. This project will examine both regular operation, such as daily traffic fluctuation or planned maintenance/construction, and extreme events that have recurring intervals significantly greater than bridge design life span.

In the second project, Risk-Based Methodology for Structural Evaluation of Bridge-Sized Culverts, Yang and co-PIs Kevin White of E.L. Robinson Engineering of Ohio and Timothy Wood of The Citadel Military College of South Carolina will use another three-year FHWA grant to evaluate the structural integrity and assess risks for long-span culverts.

Many long-span culverts are subject to loads from heavy trucks, and thus need to be evaluated for their load carrying capacities to estimate safety margins. However, the current manual on bridge evaluation provides limited guidance for bridge-sized culverts due to their distinct structural configurations and different consequences of culvert overload. The project will develop a risk-based approach that can calibrate the varying target reliability levels of culverts and the associated load and resistance factors used for structural evaluation. By investigating all critical risk factors relevant to culvert safety under vehicle load, this research will formulate a risk-based methodology for evaluating bridge-sized culverts.

These two projects will support respectively the seismic and multi-hazard resilience program and the load rating program of FHWA, addressing its strategic goals and objectives in safety, infrastructure, innovation, and accountability.

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

Photo by Glen Richard/iStock

Ten Portland State University students have been awarded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) scholarships for the 2021/22 academic year. We're very proud to acknowledge their hard work and dedication. The NITC Scholarship program recognizes outstanding students working on transportation projects. Financial support for students helps to develop the workforce by directing talented individuals toward research and practice, raising the number and caliber of graduates in transportation. 

Meet the NITC Scholars of PSU:

Cameron Bennett, Master in Civil & Environmental Engineering

Cameron Bennett is a first-year masters student in transportation engineering. He was the recipient of a Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation at the 2022 annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, and is also the recipient of a 2021 Walter H. Kramer Scholarship. Cameron currently serves as president of the PSU student group ITE-STEP (Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning). His work as a graduate research assistant focuses on promoting and facilitating the use of active transportation as a tool for equity, livability, and economic development. Cameron is passionate about bicycle and pedestrian design, planning, and policy in urban environments.

Connect with Cameron on LinkedIn and see a poster on How E-Bike Incentives are Used to Expand the Market here.

Darshan Chauhan, Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering

Darshan Chauhan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Graduate Research Assistant at PSU. His doctoral work with Dr. Avinash Unnikrishnan is in the area of freight logistics systems utilizing emerging transportation technologies like UAV/drones and electric freight vehicles. Specifically, his work focuses on planning and real-time resource allocation in such systems using methods like robust optimization and reinforcement learning. He is fascinated by how the field of transportation is an amalgam of various disciplines and is interested in contributing to an area where optimization, data analytics, and civil engineering intersect. He is a student member of INFORMS, ASCE, and ITE. He has served as the Treasurer of STEP, PSU’s ITE student chapter. Recently, he presented work on drone facility locations for emergency medical scenarios in a January 2022 Friday Transportation Seminar.

Connect with Darshan on LinkedIn and see the two posters he presented at TRB 2022: 

• Maximum Profit Facility Location and Dynamic Resource Allocation for Instant Delivery Logistics
• Robust Multi Period Maximum Coverage Facility Location Problem Considering Coverage Reliability 

Christian Galiza, B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Christian Galiza is a senior in civil engineering. He is the Vice President of Communications for STEP. He enjoys transportation because it's fascinating to think about the relationship between building sustainable infrastructure and transportation planning and its impact on how people move every day.

Connect with Christian on LinkedIn and see a collage showcasing the number of communications materials created during his involvement with ITE-STEP.

Cole Grisham, Ph.D. in Public Affairs

Cole Grisham is a Ph.D. candidate in the Hatfield School of Government and a Transportation Systems Planner with FHWA Western Federal Lands. His work focuses on long range transportation planning, particularly in the areas of regional and intergovernmental policy in the American Northwest. Cole is a certified planner through the American Planning Association and holds a B.A. in Political Science and M.U.P. in Regional Planning from the University of Michigan. His doctoral work focuses on regional planning and policy in Tribal communities. He presented research related to this topic in an October 2021 Friday Transportation Seminar: Transportation Planning in Tribal Communities.

Connect with Cole on LinkedIn and see his paper on Regional Transportation Policy in Alaskan Native Villages here.

Asif Haque, Master of Urban & Regional Planning

Asif Haque is a second-year graduate student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Transportation. He is a Graduate Research Assistant with PSU, through which he serves the Portland Bureau of Transportation as a Community Service Aide. Asif previously served the Oregon Department of Energy as a Data Visualization Intern and the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability as a Community Service Aide. He is the current Vice President of Finance & Conferences for STEP. In relation to his transportation interests, Asif serves as an Assistant Project Manager for the Portland-based nonprofit Outgrowing Hunger. He earned a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a B.S. in Journalism from The University of Kansas. He served as an Undergraduate Research Fellow for The University of Kansas Institute for Policy and Social Research Center for Environmental Policy, focusing on county-level community-driven food security. Asif is broadly interested in how transportation systems and services, particularly public and active transportation, can better facilitate and accommodate people’s access to goods, services, employment, and resources.

Connect with Asif on LinkedIn and see his white paper on the Benefits of Connected Active and Public Transportation Systems here.

Nick Meusch, Master of Urban & Regional Planning

Nick Meusch is a second-year student in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program and third-year student in the Graduate Certificate in Transportation program at PSU. Nick is interested in vehicle electrification and the infrastructure needs required for implementation, supporting equitable shared micromobility, and planning and designing active transportation facilities. Nick was recently celebrated along with the other 2021 scholars during the American Public Transportation Association's TRANSform Conference as a 2021 American Public Transportation Foundation (APTF) scholarship recipient. Nick currently works as a proposal manager and planner for Elcon Associates, a minority-owned, electrical and systems engineering firm that performs consulting services for transit agencies operating rail transit systems and infrastructure to support zero-emission vehicles. Most recently as a planner at Elcon, Nick supported the TriMet Facilities System Master Plan exploring zero-emissions vehicle options for TriMet facilities. As the Events Vice President in ITE-STEP, Nick looks forward to broadening students' professional connections in order to provide a more equitable transportation workforce as well as attracting students in supportive fields such as electrical engineering to participate in the world of transportation.

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn and see their white paper on Planning for America’s Next Fuel Service Station here.

Laurel Priest, Master of Urban & Regional Planning

Laurel Priest is an Urban and Regional Planning graduate student focusing on community engagement and transportation planning. She currently works for the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) as a Community Service Aide II. She has also served as a PSU teaching assistant and as a Graduate Research Assistant for TREC, and completed an internship as a community recovery fellow at the Division-Midway Alliance for Community Improvement. As a MURP student in 2021 she worked on a proposal for Reimagining the PSU Campus.

Connect with Laurel on LinkedIn and see a report for the PSU Planning and Sustainability Office for 2021 and 2022. 

Caleb Susuras, Master of Urban & Regional Planning

Caleb Susuras is a first-year MURP student who earned his BA from Ambrose University. He has experience as a voucher specialist with the Denver Regional Council of Governments, and has also worked for the Denver Regional Mobility and Access Council. He is committed to safe, equitable, and green streets.

Connect with Caleb on LinkedIn and see a work sample comparing physical characteristics of Portland’s dangerous intersections.

Mouhamad Taha, B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Mouhamad Taha is a civil engineering student who’s interested in transportation engineering. He is in his junior year and almost done with his first transportation course. Mouhamad is looking forward to specializing in transportation engineering and transportation systems through the pathway program at PSU, which is a combination of bachelor's and master’s degrees in civil engineering. He is interested in highway and infrastructure design, and has always wanted to explore the transportation system in different countries and regions.

Huijun Tan, Ph.D. in Urban Studies

]Huijun Tan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Urban Studies at Portland State University. Her research interest focuses on transportation planning and equity. Her dissertation looks into equitable accessibility planning among marginalized communities and populations. In the past 5 years, she has been working on research and planning projects relevant to transit-oriented development, active transportation (e.g., crossing safety), transportation incentive program evaluation, and corridor master plan. Before her doctoral program, she had been involved in street improvement in a vulnerable community and innovative agriculture development in food desert communities. Also, she was engaged in some vacant land development and vacant land reuse research projects. The experience ingrains her interest in regional planning and social inequality issues. As a graduate research assistant she has worked with TREC researchers Nathan McNeil and John MacArthur on new ways of connecting traditionally underserved communities to transportation options represented by new technologies. 

Connect with Huijun on LinkedIn and watch her presentation in an April 2021 Friday Transportation Seminar: Evaluation of a Transportation Incentive Program for Affordable Housing Residents.

NITC is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. This PSU-led research partnership also includes the Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah. Faculty committees at each of our partner universities nominate students for the scholarship program. See the NITC scholars from other member campuses.

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.

Despite widespread use of walking as a transportation mode, walking has received far less attention than the motor vehicle in terms of national guidance and methods to support planning, designing, and operating safe, functional, and comfortable facilities. To address this gap, the TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program funded NCHRP Project 17-87: Enhancing Pedestrian Volume Estimation and Developing HCM Pedestrian Methodologies for Safe and Sustainable Communities. Led by Principal Investigator Paul Ryus, Kittelson & Associates partnered with Portland State University and the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina to lead research to update pedestrian analysis methodologies in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). 

The research team created the following new products, published in 2022 and free to download from the National Academies Press:

• NCHRP Research Report 992: Guide to Pedestrian Analysis: Documents the state-of-the-practice for pedestrian volume counting, pedestrian safety analysis, and pedestrian operations analysis. A major portion of the research evaluated the effects of safety countermeasures at street crossings on pedestrian quality of service (QOS). You can also learn more about this repot by watching this short video introduction on this state-of-the-art guide.
• NCHRP Web-Only Document 312: Enhancing Pedestrian Volume Estimation and Developing HCM Pedestrian Methodologies for Safe and Sustainable Communities: New and updated HCM-compatible methodologies to evaluate the quality of networks of pedestrian facilities, and synthesized best practices for estimating pedestrian volumes and exposure:
  • A new method for evaluating pedestrian satisfaction and associated LOS at uncontrolled pedestrian crossings.
  • An updated method for estimating pedestrian delay at uncontrolled pedestrian crossings, including up-to-date information on motorist yielding rates for a wide variety of safety countermeasures.
  • An updated method for estimating pedestrian delay at signalized crossings covering a wider range of situations, including two-stage crossings, two-leg crossings, exclusive pedestrian phases, and crosswalk closures.
  • An update to the “roadway crossing difficulty” component of the HCM’s urban street pedestrian LOS method
• Two spreadsheet-based computational engines for implementing the new and updated analysis methods developed by the project
  • Signalized Crossing Pedestrian Delay Computational Engine
  • Uncontrolled Crossing Pedestrian Delay and LOS Computational Engine
• Five presentations from a peer exchange workshop:
  • Project Overview
  • Pedestrian Volume Counting
  • Pedestrian Operations Analysis
  • Pedestrian Quality of Service Analysis
  • Pedestrian Safety Analysis
• An Implementation Plan for putting this research into practice.
• Draft text to update NCHRP Report 825: Planning and Preliminary Engineering Applications Guide to the HCM to match the proposed HCM changes and incorporate a recommended approach to evaluating pedestrian network QOS

The research team included:

• Kittleson and Associates: Paul Ryus, Anusha Musunuru, and James Bonneson
• Portland State University: Sirisha Kothuri, Christopher Monsere, and Nathan McNeil
• Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina: Seth LaJeunesse, Krista Nordback, Wesley Kumfer, and Sophie Currin

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

Photo by Dmytro Varavin/iStock

For governments and clean energy advocates looking to encourage people to use e-bikes for transportation, a new online tool from Portland State University researchers offers an overview of the existing incentive programs in the United States and Canada.

The E-Bike Incentive Programs in North America table tracks e-bike purchase incentive programs and key details that can provide a point of reference for the development of future e-bike incentive programs and policies, or for further research on the topic. Read a recent article about the tool in BikePortland.

John MacArthur, researcher at PSU's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), led the development of the tool with the help of PSU transportation engineering masters student Cameron Bennett, a 2021 Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellow.

COMPARING TYPES OF E-BIKE INCENTIVE PROGRAMS

While the tracker shows a wide variety of approaches, Bennett identified Saanich, BC as demonstrating an especially promising model. Their "targeted universalism" approach uses econometric analysis to set appropriate incentive levels for various income brackets, helping those who need it most with the largest incentives.

One of the most surprising findings? Most programs seemed to set their incentive levels "fairly arbitrarily:"

"Many were based on a function of funding available and desired number of incentives, while many others were seemingly based on the $200 precedent set early on by Burlington Vermont. (Burlington's program was developed based on carbon tax savings over the lifetime of an e-bike.) Generally, it seems that little thought was given to the potential of the specific incentive value to induce new purchases that would not otherwise have happened for particular groups or income brackets," Bennett said.

PSU Student Cameron Bennett presents "How E-Bike Incentive Programs Are Used to Expand the Market (PDF)" in a TRB 2022 Eisenhower Poster Session (photo by Jennifer Dill)

One of the most challenging aspects of creating the tracker was that information on funding source, in most cases, was not readily available.

"There aren't enough programs with enough total participation to gain an understanding of the impact and effects of various sizes and delivery methods of incentives. John, Chris Cherry (UTK), Luke Jones (Valdosta State) and I will be conducting a stated preference survey in the coming months to address this gap in knowledge and help better inform future programs," Bennett said.

The tracker is one of several outputs of a larger e-bike project funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities with support from PeopleForBikes, and provides key details for each incentive program, including:

• Country, State, Location – Location that the program is available in.
• Administrator, Admin. Type – The program administrator and the administrator’s entity type.
• Status – Whether the program is currently active, closed, or otherwise.
• Incentive Style – How the incentive amount is determined.
• Discount Mechanism – How the incentive value is delivered to the recipient.
• Discount Rate – Incentive rate if the incentive is a percentage of e-bike purchase price.
• Minimum Purchase/Fee – Minimum required purchase price to qualify for the incentive, or the fee required to participate in loan-to-own programs.
• Maximum Incentive – Maximum incentive amount if the incentive is a percentage of e-bike purchase price. Incentive amount if the incentive is a flat rate.
• Total Earmark – Total program funding.
• Income-Qualified? – Is participation in the program restricted to a certain income level?
• Low-Income Option? – Are additional incentives available to people at certain income levels?
• Low-Income Threshold – Income limit to receive low-income benefits.
• Details/Links – Further details if required for program comprehension, links to program websites or news releases.
• Parent/Child Program – Indication of whether a program exists as a sub-program for a larger piece of legislation, or is a ‘parent’ of other sub-programs.

The tool was developed using web searches, google alerts, and an existing incentive program tracker provided by PeopleForBikes. The list is updated periodically (you can see when the most recent update was at the top of the spreadsheet) to reflect newly-implemented or proposed programs, current program status, or to include new programs as they emerge.

HOW E-BIKE INCENTIVE PROGRAMS CAN EXPAND THE MARKET

In 2019, MacArthur and fellow e-bike researcher Christopher Cherry of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, together with then-PSU student Michael McQueen, wrote a white paper exploring techniques to develop and structure e-bike incentive programs to reduce one of the biggest barriers to e-bike use: the high cost. "How E-Bike Incentive Programs are Used to Expand the Market" was published in conjuction with a second white paper, "Estimating the Effect of E-bikes On Person Miles Travelled and Greenhouse Gas Emissions."

In Fall 2021, the Chair of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors successfully used these white papers to advocate for a brand new e-bike incentive program that will serve low income residents from 3 counties on the California Central Coast. Through their regional Air Resources Board they are offering a $1,000 incentive for the purchase of an e-bike. "Your work to establish the value of e-bikes was tremendously valuable as I fought to gain support for a local program," shared Board Chair Wendy Root Askew.

Learn more about those research efforts in The E-Bike Potential: How E-Bikes Can Improve Sustainable Transportation.

ELECTRIC VEHICLE INCENTIVE COST AND IMPACT TOOL

The incentive tracker can be useful in conjunction with another online tool, developed by the same research team in 2020: the Electric Vehicle Incentive Cost and Impact Tool. This tool enables policymakers, public stakeholders, and advocates to quickly visualize the potential outcomes of an electric vehicle incentive program made up of several vehicle types. The tool estimates the cost efficiency of a proposed program in terms of the cost per kg CO2 avoided by each mode over the course of one year. It also takes the proposed budget into consideration to calculate the potential number of incentives to be made available and the amount of total CO2 that would be avoided due to internal combustion engine automobile VMT displacement.

Photo by Halfpoint/iStock

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

The 101st annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) is coming up January 9 - 13, 2022, and has returned to an in-person gathering in Washington, D.C. This year’s theme at TRB is Innovating an Equitable, Resilient, Sustainable, and Safe Transportation System, and Portland State University (PSU) researchers and students are well qualified to share their work on that topic!

VIEW THE ONLINE GUIDE TO PSU AT TRB 2022

DOWNLOAD THE PSU PRESENTATION FILES

*Due to the evolving status of speaker attendance and TRB programming, please refer to your TRB schedule for the most current information in the event of changes.*

Innovating an Equitable Transportation System…

Exploring the Costs of Addressing Equity in the Transition to Cashless Fare Collection
Aaron Golub and John MacArthur are leading a poster session (#1418) on Jan 12th (10:30 AM - 12 PM). Read more about this study in NextCity's deep dive article: What Happens When Cash Fares Are Eliminated? 

Pedestrian Injuries by Social Equity Factors in Oregon: Measuring Statewide Pedestrian Injury Disparity Using Common Data
Nathan McNeil of TREC and and Joshua Roll of the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) will share results from ODOT's statewide analysis "Understanding Pedestrian Injuries and Social Equity" in a lectern session Jan 12 (1353) as well as a workshop (1431) on Jan 13. They presented an overview of the findings in an online seminar in October 2021; watch the recording to learn more.

Innovating a Resilient Transportation System…

Transportation System Resiliency and Disaster Response and Recovery: A Review on U.S. Metropolitan Long-range Transportation Plans
Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) student Jai Daniels and TREC's John MacArthur will share national practices around transportation system resiliency and disaster recovery in a poster session (1152) on Monday Jan 10. Learn about TREC's ongoing resilient transportation infrastructure research, and get to know more about Jai in a March 2021 Student Spotlight interview.

“It’s Complicated”: Exploring the Relationship Status of In-store and Online Grocery Shopping During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Kelly Clifton and civil engineering grad student Max Nonnamaker, along with Gabriella Abou-Zeid of ICF, PSU alum Kristina Currans of the University of Arizona, and Amanda Howell of the University of Oregon will explore the future of our urban freight system under the increasing demands of pandemic-era online shopping, in a poster session (1374) on Jan 12. Read about related research led by Clifton on Consumer Responses to Household Provisioning During COVID-19 Crisis and Recovery.

Innovating a Sustainable Transportation System…

Modeling Optimal Drone Courier Fleet Size and Sustainability Tradeoffs
Miguel Figliozzi will share a model exploring the use of drones for last mile delivery along with Yuval Hadas of Bar Ilan University in a lectern session (1406) on Jan 12. For additional context, watch a 2018 presentation by Figliozzi on related research into the sustainability of drone deliveries.

Transit and Active Transportation Use for Non-commute Travel among Portland TOD Residents
Nathan McNeil and TREC director Jennifer Dill, in a poster session (1232) on Jan 11, will share survey-based insights on the travel behavior of transit-oriented development (TOD) residents. Learn more about that research: What Do 15 Years of Travel Surveys Tell Us About TOD Residents?

Innovating a Safe Transportation System…

Systemic Opportunities to Improve Older Pedestrian Safety: Merging Crash Data Analysis and a Stakeholder Workshop
In a lectern session (1162) on Jan 10, Jason Anderson, Sirisha Kothuri, and Christopher Monsere of civil engineering, with David Hurwitz of Oregon State University, will present a framework for improving older pedestrian safety, using Oregon as a case study. Along with other TREC researchers, Anderson, Kothuri and Monsere have conducted a wide variety of active transportation safety research; check out some of those projects here.

Evaluation of Posted Speed Limits Reductions on Urban Roads with a High Percentage of Cyclists
In the same session, Miguel Figliozzi, Jaclyn Schaefer and Avinash Unnikrishnan of civil engineering will present a before and after analysis of the impact of posted speed limit changes on passenger car speeds in Portland, OR. Read about related research on the impact of bicycle traffic on car travel speeds, and ​​the effects of reducing posted speed limits to 20 mph.

And so much more!

PSU researchers and students are bringing a lot of transportation expertise to TRB, including drone delivery, bicyclist comprehension of infrastructure, urban freight, and so much more! Check out our online guide to PSU at TRB 2022 for the full schedule.

Portland State Students at TRB

PSU students are bringing it to this year's TRB: 14 students are attending, coordinated by the student group, STEP - Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning and funded by our National Institute for Transportation and Communities program. Five PSU students will be presenting their work in poster and lectern sessions, and STEP president Cameron Bennet will receive an Eisenhower Fellowship presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

At the CUTC Awards Ceremony, to be held virtually on January 8, PSU PhD candidate Kelly Rodgers will be awarded the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) Outstanding Student of the Year.

National Institute of Transportation and Communities

We partner with five universities on a U.S. DOT funded research consortium. Our collective expertise on the mobility of people and goods is showcased in our online guide to NITC at TRB 2022, featuring 138 researchers from among NITC partner universities University of Oregon, Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Utah, University of Arizona and University of Texas at Arlington, in addition to PSU.

Photos by Cait McCusker

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.