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Three Portland State University Students Receive WTS Transportation Scholarships

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

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

Congratulations to the 2024 WTS scholars of PSU!

Eun Jun Choi: Jannet Walker-Ford Leadership Legacy Scholarship

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

Connect with Eun Jun Choi on LinkedIn.

Holly Querin: Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship

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

Connect with Holly Querin on LinkedIn.

Isa Swain: Molitoris Leadership Scholarship

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

Connect with Isa Swain on LinkedIn.

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

Building Data Power To Enhance Active Transportation

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

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

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

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

WHY ARE DATA SOLUTIONS NEEDED?

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

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

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

WHAT TYPE OF DATA?

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

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

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

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

WHAT TYPE OF SOLUTIONS?

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

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

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

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

Photo by choi dongsu/iStock

How Better Block PSU Helped Launch the Steel Bridge Skatepark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The PSU Project Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transportation Undergraduate Research Fellowship (TURF)

Through a competitive application process, the Transportation Undergraduate Research Fellowship (TURF) program is a unique eight-week summer fellowship for undergraduates to get experience in transportation research. Hosted at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, a hub of transportation innovation and expertise, fellows will work on research projects under the guidance of a research mentor. What can TURF Fellows expect from the program?

Firsthand exposure to the research process;
A chance to practice collecting & analyzing data, and other useful tasks;
A cohort experience with other TURF fellows;
Experience another university campus in an urban setting with robust multimodal network;
The opportunity to spend the summer in beautiful Portland, Oregon!

At the end of the program, the students will write a final written reflection describing their research findings and experience of the program.

Better Block PSU – Unlock the Potential of Your Public Space

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond Transit: Collaborative Strategies for Public Transportation Agencies in Responding to Homelessness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transforming the School Commute: PSU Researchers Explore the Impact of Bike Buses

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

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

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

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

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

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

PSU MURP Team Wins Student Group Award for Planning and Policy from National Council of University Transportation Centers

A team of students in Portland State University's Master of Urban & Regional Planning (MURP) program has won an award from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC). CUTC presents its National Student Awards at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), which takes place next week in Washington D.C. This year is the first year that CUTC has included an award category for group projects, and the PSU team is the first to win the new CUTC Graduate-Level Student Group Award.

Team members Owen Christofferson, Sara Goldstein, Nick Hadfield, Zhouheng (Brian) Liu, Jenny Mazzella and Victoria Young won the award for the MURP workshop project, Nixyáawii Watikš.

The student team partnered with the planning office of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation to plan a multi-use trail to improve walkability and connectivity in the community.

"We consulted with the tribal government to build a multi-use path that would connect a neighborhood in the reservation called "Mission" where there is commercial activity as well as a government center, a health center, educational facilities and a neighborhood being planned. Our job is find the best alignment to connect it to the Pendleton Riverwalk to allow walking, biking, and equestrian use for the tribal community to be able to access, in a much more safe and comfortable manager, all the opportunities in the town of Pendleton as well as allow folks in Pendleton access to the reservation," team member Owen Christofferson said.

Learn more about the students' project in this YouTube video:

Read East Oregonian coverage of the project: Portland State University students partner with tribes to plan trail.

Graduate students in the Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program at Portland State University work in teams of 4-6 members to complete applied planning projects, known as "the MURP workshop." See more recent MURP workshop projects here.

Portland State University Transportation Research Highlights at TRB 2024

The 103rd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) will be held January 7–11, 2024 in Washington, D.C., and Portland State University transportation faculty and researchers will be sharing their expertise in 15 sessions at the world's largest transportation conference. The TRB annual meeting attracts thousands of transportation professionals from around the globe to address transportation policy, practice, and plans for the future.

VIEW THE ONLINE GUIDE TO PSU AT TRB

Some highlights from the PSU Program

Sunday, January 7 - Bicycle and Pedestrian Data Fusion: Learning from Each Other

Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State University will present in this workshop, sharing "Exploring Data Fusion Techniques to Estimate Network-Wide Bicycle Volumes."

Traditional bicycle counters can provide data for limited sections of the bike network, often these counters are installed at important locations like trails or bridges. While limited in location, they count everyone who bikes by. Meanwhile, GPS & mobile data cover the entire transportation network, but that data only represents those travelers who are using smartphones or GPS. Combining the traditional location-based data sources with this new, crowdsourced data offers better accuracy than any could provide alone. This project drew data from Location Based Services (LBS), app, and bike share, as well as more traditional infrastructure and socio-demographic datasets. Learn more about the project.

Tuesday, January 9 - Pedestrian Accessibility, Walkability, and Design

Kyuri Kim, a PhD student in urban planning at the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning and a Graduate Reseach Assistant working with advisor Jennifer Dill, will present "Under the Influence of Parents: A Longitudinal Study of Children’s Walking" in this poster session.

Many researchers have studied children's active travel; however, they have mostly been cross-sectional studies dealing with commuting to school and parental perceptions and attitudes. To find ways to promote children's active travel, this longitudinal study uses panel data (two time periods) to examine how parents' actual walking and safety perception correlated with children’s walking. This study is meaningful in finding the relationships between the attitudes and behaviors of parents’ and children's walking.

Tuesday, January 9 - Freight Demand and Choice Modeling Using Advanced Data Sets

Michael Bronson, a graduate student in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, will present "Exploratory Analysis of Factors Affecting Home Delivery Returns" along with his advisor, Miguel Figliozzi, and co-authors Ali Riahi Samani and Sabyasachee Mishra (University of Memphis).

E-commerce and house deliveries have experienced a rapid growth in the last two decades. The return of online shopping products is a side effect of online shopping that has not been properly studied in the transportation literature. This research answers two novel research questions:

(i) What household characteristics are associated with a higher or lower propensity to return online purchases?

(ii) What type of products contribute to positive return delivery rates?

The results indicate that the number of online purchases, the percentage of fashion and beauty products purchased online, the presence of a delivery subscription, higher household income, and lower age are the key factors that increase the probability of having returns for products purchased online. Implications of the findings for transportation planning and online shopping are analyzed and discussed.

Wednesday, January 10 - Safety Performance and Analysis Research

Tanmoy Bhowmik, a new faculty member who joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering as an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2023, has research being shared in seven sessions on the program. In a lectern session on Wednesday, January 10, he will present "A Systematic Unified Approach for Addressing Temporal Instability in Road Safety Analysis."

"In the world of road safety analysis, checking for temporal instability is crucial because it helps to evaluate if parameters remain stable over time and identify potential variations. To that extent, the research effort discusses the limitations of the existing models for checking temporal instability, emphasizes the need for a more effective evaluation framework, and finally develops an alternative novel ecionometric approach to efficiently evaluate temporal instability," Bhowmik said.

This project offers a significant improvement to current approaches to capture temporal instability. Comparison results indicate that the proposed model outperforms other models, providing superior data fit with significantly fewer parameters. The proposed model is suitable to forecast crashes for future years.

In addition to the three PSU students presenting their own work, 11 more will be attending TRB to network with other students and professionals, attend sessions, and be part of the biggest transportation conference in the world.

PSU Eisenhower Fellow: Kayla Sorenson

We are proud to congratulate Portland State University Civil & Environmental Engineering PhD student Kayla Sorenson, who has been awarded the 2023 Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship presented by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

She will be presenting her research on "Mitigating Liquefaction Risk for Transportation Infrastructure using Microbially Induced Desaturation" in the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program Poster Session on Tuesday, January 9.

The Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program advances the transportation workforce by helping to attract the nation's brightest minds to the field of transportation, encouraging future transportation professionals to seek advanced degrees, and helping to retain top talent in the U.S. transportation industry.

Meet Kayla Sorenson

Transportation Academy Researchers Win Charley V. Wootan Award

Nathan McNeil, a Research Associate at PSU's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), and co-authors Keith Bartholomew and Matt Ryan (University of Utah), have been selected for a Charley V. Wootan Award for their paper "Transportation Academies as Catalysts for Civic Engagement in Transportation Decision-making." They will be presented with the award in January at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).

The paper, published in Transportation Research Record (TRR): The Journal of the Transportation Research Board, draws on findings from a project funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), with additional support from Salt Lake City Transportation Division; Wasatch Front Regional Council; Utah Department of Transportation; Utah Transit Authority; University of Utah; Salt Lake County, Regional Planning and Transportation; and the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Read more about the project: Launching the Wasatch Transportation Academy.

The article will also appear in a promotional issue of the TRR journal, physical copies of which will be available in the TRB Annual Meeting Exhibitor Hall in Washington, D.C. during the annual meeting. Stop by the TRR Journal booth for a copy.

The award-winning paper tracks the rise of transportation academies in North America, and provides a detailed look at two academies: one in Portland, Oregon with a 30-year history (the Portland Traffic and Transportation Class), and another recently launched in the Salt Lake City, Utah region.

The research examines citizen planning academies, which became popular in the 1990s and are increasingly being used in transportation planning and decision-making contexts. Communities should be designed and built for the people who live in them, and they work best when people participate in the planning and decision-making processes that affect them. By making use of a longer-term, multiweek educational format, transportation academies have the potential to reduce barriers and enhance community capital leading to more meaningful and sustained government–community interaction.

The data from the Portland and Wasatch academies suggests that the courses are having positive impacts in enhancing community engagement outcomes and in assisting agencies seeking to connect more effectively with their constituents.

The Wootan Award, established in 2004, is presented for outstanding papers in the field of policy and organization. The awards will be presented in the Thomas B. Deen Distinguished Lecture session on Monday, January 8 at TRB.