Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Webinar: Exploring Data Fusion Techniques To Derive Bicycle Volumes On A Network, Sirisha Kothuri, Joe Broach, Kate Hyun

TREC Webinar Series

Planners and decision makers have increasingly voiced a need for network-wide estimates of bicycling activity. Such volume estimates have for decades informed motorized planning and analysis but have only recently become feasible for non-motorized travel modes. Recently, new sources of bicycling activity data have emerged such as Strava, Streetlight, and GPS-enabled bike share systems. These emerging data sources have potential advantages as a complement to traditional count data, and have even been proposed as replacements for such data, since they are collected continuously and for larger portions of local bicycle networks. However, the representativeness of these new data sources has …

Difference In Travel Behavior Between Immigrants In The U.S. And U.S. Born Residents: The Immigrant Effect For Car-Sharing, Ride-Sharing, And Bike-Sharing Services, Sangwan Lee, Michael J. Smart, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Understanding immigrants’ travel behavior is important to transportation planners and policymakers working to implement better transportation planning and public policies to serve those needs. The recent changes to the transportation system, specifically, the recent emergence of shared mobility services, such as car‐sharing, ride‐ sharing, and bike‐sharing, may have resulted in changes in how immigrants travel. Thus, we explored two research questions: (1) whether immigrants in the U.S. are more likely to rely on the three newly emerging transportation modes than US‐born persons, and (2) whether the assimilation theory can be applied to the modes. To answer these questions, we used …

Biking While Black: How Planning Contributes To Unjust Policing, Jesus Barajas

PSU Transportation Seminars

Neighborhoods of color tend to be the most dangerous places for cyclists and other road users, a result in part of historic disinvestment and failure to provide basic infrastructure. Safety efforts to reduce crashes, like Vision Zero, have called for both increased investment, a qualified benefit for disenfranchised communities, and increased traffic enforcement, a response that is likely to place people of color in even greater harm based on extensively documented police injustice.

• For more about the problems of policy and planning around 'bicycling while black,' check out a Sept 9, 2020 blog post by Jesus Barajas.

To what …

Webinar: A National Scan Of Bike Share Equity Programs: Best Practices And Lessons Learned, Nathan Mcneil, John Macarthur, Adriel Thornton

TREC Webinar Series

Connecting with cities and bike share operators from across the United States, Portland State University conducted a nationwide scan on what programs and initiatives were running to address equity in bike share. The report “National Scan of Bike Share Equity Programs” documents responses from over 70 bike share systems. This resource will help cities and operators navigate the range of actions that have been implemented to make bike share systems more equitable, examine successful strategies employed across the U.S., and understand how those successes (and challenges) are being measured and articulated. In doing so, we hope the report helps bike …

A No-Crash Course In Vision Zero Data, Anamaria Perez

PSU Transportation Seminars

Vision Zero was adopted unanimously by Portland City Council in 2015 with the goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries on Portland streets in a way that is equitable, accountable, and data-driven. But what does it mean to be data-driven? And should we stop there?

In this presentation, learn how Portland’s Vision Zero Action Plan was developed and how the Vision Zero team is using data to move into a future where all Portlanders can travel safely, regardless of the travel mode they use. Explore the datasets used in Vision Zero implementation and the challenges that come with them. …

The Impacts Of The Bicycle Network On Bicycling Activity: A Longitudinal Multi-City Approach, Wei Shi

Dissertations and Theses

Bicycling is a promising approach to improve health, environment, and economic development of urban places. Theoretically, a bicycle network's component goes beyond lanes and paths, and would generate greater impacts than the sum of its parts. However, most previous research focused on how individual types of bicycle-related infrastructure could promote bicycling. Few empirical studies investigated how bicycle networks impact bicycling activity. This project attempts to address this question. Specifically, how to properly measure bicycle networks, and what impacts bicycle networks have on bicycling activity, e.g. bike ridership and bike mode choice, across different cities and longitudinally.

To address the first …

Fast Track: Allowing Bikes To Participate In A Smart-Transportation System, Stephen Fickas, Marc Schlossberg

TREC Final Reports

This project focuses on a mode of transportation that is currently left out of V2X (vehicle-to-everything) conversations: bicycling. The project demonstrates how university researchers, city traffic engineers, and signal-controller manufacturers can come together to give bicyclists the same technology appearing on modern vehicles: Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA). GLOSA allows motorists to set their speed along corridors to maximize their chances of catching a “green wave” (i.e., not being forced to stop as they travel through the corridor). This project demonstrates how GLOSA can be used by bicyclists in the same way it is used by motorists on a …

National Scan Of Bike Share Equity Programs: Approaches And Best Practices For Promoting Equity In Bike Share, Nathan Mcneil, John Macarthur, Joseph Broach, Austin Cummings, Rae-Leigh Stark, Rebecca Sanders, Adrian Witte

TREC Final Reports

As bike share systems around the United States have grown in number and size in recent years, there has been an increasing effort to ensure that those systems are accessible to all residents, particularly those who have the fewest resources or have been underserved in the past. The mobility landscape in 2019 is rapidly changing, with scooter and e-bike systems along with ride-hailing and ride-sharing companies contributing to a new and uncharted urban transportation scene. Meanwhile, bike share is still relatively new and changing quickly. In order to compete and excel in this changing landscape, particularly with regard to providing …

V2x: Bringing Bikes Into The Mix, Stephen Fickas

TREC Final Reports

This project demonstrates how an inexpensive system (hardware and software) can add new functionality to existing signal controllers, giving bicyclists an efficient way to cross a controlled intersection. The system integrates three components: (1) a Bike Connect box that resides near the signal-controller and is connected to it, (2) an application that runs on a Bike Connect device (currently an iPhone) and requests a green light at the correct approach-distance, and (3) a cloud-based publish/subscribe (pub/sub) component that handles cellular-communication between phone app and box. One stumbling block for the project was a means to obtain reliable GPS data to …

Webinar: Rethinking Streets For Bikes: An Evidence Based Guide Of Bike-Friendly Street Retrofits, Marc Schlossberg, Roger Lindgren

TREC Webinar Series

There is a growing demand for better infrastructure and fewer barriers to biking and other forms of space-efficient micromobility. Tackling daily trips by bike is easier on the environment, healthier for users and non-users alike, uses precious urbanized public and private land more efficiently, costs taxpayers less to build and maintain infrastructure, and when routes are safe and comfortable, moving by bike is also fun! Complete Streets policies are being adopted across the country, and there is an active conversation around the safety imperative of a Complete Streets approach. Yet, local officials often need both design guidance and the …

Understanding The Accessibility, Economic And Social Equity Impacts Of Urban Greenway Infrastructure, Jenny Hsing-I Liu, Wei Shi

TREC Final Reports

“City Greenways” is a concept proposed as a part of Portland’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan, which calls for a citywide network of park-like pedestrian and bicycle friendly streets crisscrossing the city at roughly three-mile intervals. This research establishes several approaches to measure the transportation network impact of the “City Greenways” and relate bicycle network measures to economic and social equity outcomes. Expanding upon existing literature, we derived three sets of bicycle accessibility measures (BAMs). They are distance-based BAM, destinationbased BAM, and low-stress network-based BAM, which incorporate different components of a comprehensive bicycle network. The distancebased BAM measures accessibility of the active …

Urban Greenway Infrastructure: Economic And Social Impacts, Jenny Hsing-I Liu, Wei Shi

TREC Project Briefs

“City Greenways” is a concept proposed as a part of Portland’s 2035 Comprehensive Plan, which calls for a citywide network of park-like pedestrian and bicycle friendly streets crisscrossing the city at roughly three-mile intervals. This research establishes several approaches to measure the transportation network impact of the “City Greenways” and relate bicycle network measures to economic and social equity outcomes. Expanding upon existing literature, we derived three sets of bicycle accessibility measures (BAMs). They are distance-based BAM, destinationbased BAM, and low-stress network-based BAM, which incorporate different components of a comprehensive bicycle network. The distancebased BAM measures accessibility of the active …

Utrecht, Bike Capital Of The World, Martijn Rietbergen

PSU Transportation Seminars

Utrecht is a bustling, bicycle-friendly city in the Netherlands. Every day, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., over 125,000 cyclists ride to their work, school, university, public transport, shops or home through the city centre.

The municipality wants to make cycling even more attractive for these and other cyclists. Consequently, the bicycle is given precedence in the mobility policy of the municipality of Utrecht. We want to be the most bike-friendly city in the world. We want to keep our growing city livable, accessible and economically strong, and we are convinced that the bicycle can and should play a major …

Bicycles & Business Success - A San Francisco Examination, Joseph Poirier

PSU Transportation Seminars

This presentation will review research regarding the economic impact of bicycle infrastructure on local businesses. Three case study corridors in San Francisco, CA are examined, and a robust discussion of the shortcomings of the research will be included. A question and open discussion period will follow, with a focus on constructive criticism of past research and methods to improve future work.

Exploring Bicycle Accessibility And Equity In Portland, Oregon, Jenny H. Liu

PSU Transportation Seminars

As urban areas across the country are investing in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure to promote environmentally sustainable transportation and to develop livable communities, many have pointed to improvements in environmental quality, economic development and public health as potential positive outcomes. While these outcomes of active transportation infrastructure are relatively well documented, it is also known that both transportation and environmental amenities are typically unevenly distributed in the urban context. Studies show that those who are the most socioeconomically disadvantaged (i.e. low income, people of color, etc.) are also those who disproportionately experience transportation disadvantages.

This study contributes to the existing …

Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights From Bike Share Users, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill, John Macarthur, Joseph Broach

TREC Final Reports

This report seeks to provide more information about lower-income people and people of color who engage in bike share, including why they choose to become members, how they use the system, and how they benefit. The report looks at current and past bike share members, along with those who were involved in some type of equity-based outreach program. The findings draw from a survey intended to reach lower-income and/or people of color known to have engaged in bike share, either through membership or participating in events such as organized rides, in the same three cities studied in the resident report …

Webinar: Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights On Equity, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill, John Macarthur

TREC Webinar Series

While the number of public bike share systems in the United States grew considerably in recent years, early evidence indicated that many systems were not serving the diverse populations of cities, particularly lower-income residents and people of color. Lack of bike share stations in neighborhoods with people of color and/or lower incomes is one factor; however, considerable disparities appear to persist even when stations are placed in these communities.

Efforts to overcome access and use barriers (such as cost, payment options, and familiarity with the system) to bike share for underserved communities have been initiated in a number of cities. …

Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights From Residents Of Traditionally Underserved Neighborhoods, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill, John Macarthur, Joseph Broach, Steven Howland

TREC Final Reports

Evidence has shown that higher income and white populations are overrepresented in both access to and use of bike share. Efforts to overcome underserved communities’ barriers to access and use of bike share have been initiated in a number of cities, including those working with the Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) to launch and test potentially replicable approaches to improve the equity outcomes. This report describes findings from a survey of residents living near bike share stations placed in underserved communities of select BBSP cities: Philadelphia, Chicago, and Brooklyn. These were neighborhoods targeted for focused outreach related to BBSP programs, …

Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights On Equity From A Survey Of Bike Share System Owners And Operators, Steven Howland, Nathan Mcneil, Joseph Broach, Kenneth Rankins, John Macarthur, Jennifer Dill

TREC Final Reports

The number of public bike share systems has been increasing rapidly across the United States over the past five to 10 years. To date, most academic research around bike share in the U.S. has focused on the logistics of planning and operationalizing successful systems. Investigations of system users and impacts on the local community are less common, and studies focused on efforts to engage underserved communities in bike share are rarer still. This report uses a survey of representatives from 56 U.S. bike share systems to better understand and document current approaches toward serving low-income and minority populations. The survey …

Barriers To Biking For Women And Minorities, Amy Lubitow

TREC Project Briefs

The health benefits of bicycling are well understood; numerous studies link increased cycling activity with improved health outcomes. Research suggest that the cycling behavior most likely to generate broad, population-level health benefits is everyday routine cycling—including running errands and taking other short trips. Despite these health benefits and new investment in cycling infrastructure, overall cycling levels in the U.S. lag behind many other nations. Amidst findings of increased ridership, research still finds that women and racial minorities are underrepresented as cyclists in North America.

While quantitative data may reveal estimates of these disparities, little is known about the motivations or …

Narratives Of Marginalized Cyclists: Understanding Obstacles To Utilitarian Cycling Among Women And Minorities In Portland, Or, Amy Lubitow

TREC Final Reports

Research has demonstrated that everyday or utilitarian forms of cycling are most likely to generate positive population-level health impacts (Garrard et al., 2012), yet significant deterrents to routine cycling remain, particularly for women and minorities. The primary aim of this project was to conduct a qualitative interview study that generated rich, narrative data regarding obstacles to routine or utilitarian cycling for women and minorities who already see biking as a viable form of transit, but who make relatively few bike trips. A secondary aim of the project was to develop a set of specific interventions that have the potential to …

Webinar: Economic Impacts From Bicycle And Pedestrian Street Improvements, Jenny H. Liu

TREC Webinar Series

As many cities are investing in street improvements to provide better biking and walking experiences, the economic value and impacts of these active transportation facilities remain areas where many practitioners, planners and policy makers are seeking more conclusive evidence. With various modes competing for scarce resources, planners and transportation agencies often struggle with how to justify infrastructure investments for non-motorized modes, particularly when driving is still the predominant mode of transportation in most cities.

In this project we assess property value impacts of Portland’s “Green Loop” signature bike infrastructure concept, illustrating the importance of considering both accessibility and extensiveness of …

Active Travelers, Competitive Consumers, Kelly J. Clifton, Christopher Devlin Muhs, Sara Morrissey, Tomás Morrissey, Kristina Marie Currans, Chloe Ritter

TREC Project Briefs

No abstract provided.

Bicycle And Pedestrian Engineering Design Curriculum Expansion, Ashley Haire

TREC Final Reports

This project summary report describes the execution of OTREC Project #298 (Development, Deployment and Assessment of a New Educational Paradigm for Transportation Professionals and University Students). The project is one facet of a multiyear collaboration of the Region X Transportation Consortium that was sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The regional collaboration aims to shift the traditional paradigm of engineering course delivery to foster a more hands-on approach. The University of Idaho, for example, has created activity-based modules for a traffic signals course, while the University of Washington developed similar modules for a freight systems course. The focus of …

Reinventing The Wheel, Amy Hesse, April Cutter, Spencer Williams, Reza Farhoodi

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Reinventing the Wheel project is the process of developing a Bicycle Refinement Plan for the City of Redmond. A group of volunteer urban & regional planning graduate students from Portland State University, known as b:spoke Planning & Design, has been charged with developing strategies to increase bicycle ridership and remove barriers to transit options in Redmond. The project is a "refinement plan", as it involves the refinement of and building upon existing City plans such as the Transportation Systems Plan (TSP), Bicycle Master Plan, and Parks & Recreation Trails Master Plan. This project was conducted under the supervision of …

Vision Zero Oregon, Marielle Brown, Nick Falbo, Brandy Steffen, Michelle Van Tijen, Ben Weber

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Vision Zero Oregon (VZO) is a street safety philosophy that aims to create streets where no one will be killed or seriously injured. Vision Zero Oregon prioritizes road safety above all else. Every life is worth more than an increase in speeds or road capacity for vehicles. Achieving Vision Zero Oregon goals will require a shift in the focus of policy, laws and enforcement, and the formation of a new relationship between residents and their streets, and revolution in the way transportation departments operate their streets. This project takes on one part of this complex topic, focusing on community interest, …

Initiative For Bicycle And Pedestrian Innovation, Jennifer Dill, Lynn Weigand

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation aims to advance the field of bicycle and pedestrian transportation through four primary mechanisms: (1) developing and pursuing a collaborative research agenda that more directly informs practice and and involves students through dissertation research and fellowships; (2) translating relevant research into a format and language that is more useful to practitioners, and making that research available through technology transfer; (3) developing more holistic approaches to the education and training of planners and engineers; and (4) supporting community-based outreach and education, to promote awareness of bicycle and pedestrian issues statewide and nationally. This proposal …