Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Plans And Living Practices For The Green Campus Of Portland State University, Yoon Jung Choi, Minjung Oh, Jihye Kang, Loren Lutzenhiser

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study aims to comprehend Portland State University (PSU)’s green campus strategies, and students’ level of knowledge and living practices relating to green campus. PSU’s sustainable campus plan has been nationally and internationally recognized. A literature review, field investigation, and interviews were conducted to ascertain the PSU green campus strategies. This study also used a survey to understand students’ level of knowledge and practices. The survey results were analyzed by SPSS. Green campus projects at PSU were operated by official organizations and funded according to PSU’s long term plans in 12 multilateral categories: administration, energy, water, climate action, green buildings, …

Estimating Reliability Indices And Confidence Intervals For Transit And Traffic At The Corridor Level, Travis B. Glick

PSU Transportation Seminars

As congestion worsens, the importance of rigorous methodologies to estimate travel-time reliability increases. Exploiting fine-granularity transit GPS data, this research proposes a novel method to estimate travel-time percentiles and confidence intervals. Novel transit reliability measures based on travel-time percentiles are proposed to identify and rank low-performance hotspots; the proposed reliability measures can be utilized to distinguish peak-hour low performance from whole-day low performance. As a case study, the methodology is applied to a bus transit corridor in Portland, Oregon. Time-space speed profiles, heatmaps, and visualizations are employed to highlight sections and intersections with high travel-time variability and transit low performance. …

Measuring Stress Levels For Real-World On-Road Cyclists: Do Bicycle Facilities, Intersections And Traffic Levels Affect Cyclists' Stress?, Álvaro Caviedes

PSU Transportation Seminars

This research effort presents a novel approach to measure cyclists’ stress: real-world, on-road measurements of physiological stress as cyclists travel across different types of bicycle facilities in various traffic volumes. This study addresses the question of how the characteristics of a bicycle trip affect stress levels using physiological data, specifically GSR. As detailed in the next section, GSR-based studies have been successfully employed for many years in the psychological field to recognize and associate emotions and behaviors to physiological responses. The three research questions examined in this study are: i) Does peak traffic impact cyclists’ stress levels? ii) Do intersections …

A Pathway Linking Smart Growth Neighborhoods To Home-Based Pedestrian Travel, Steven R. Gehrke, Kelly J. Clifton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Land development patterns, urban design, and transportation system features are inextricably linked to pedestrian travel. Accordingly, planners and decision-makers have turned to integrated transportation-land use policies and investments to address the pressing need for improvements in physical activity levels via the creation of walkable communities. However, policy questions regarding the identification of smart growth indicators and their connection to walking remain unanswered, because most studies of the built environment determinants of pedestrian travel: (a) represent the built environment with isolated metrics instead of as a multidimensional construct and (b) model this transportation-land use relationship outside of a multidirectional analytic framework. …

Avoiding Bus Bunching: From Theory To Practice, Ricardo Giesen

PSU Transportation Seminars

The problem of bus bunching in a high frequency service has been largely studied in the literature.

This phenomenon is produced by three main factors

(i) the variability in travel time between stops; (ii) variations in passenger demand; and (iii) drivers’ heterogeneity.

In order to tackle this phenomenon a wide range of control strategies have been proposed, however, none of them had been successfully implemented on a large transit network with high frequency services.

In this talk, we present a control scheme based on a rolling horizon optimization problem that has been successfully implemented for real-time control of two high …

Cross-Laminated Timber: An Innovative Building Material Takes Hold In Oregon, Andrew Crampton

Metroscape

In a rapidly urbanizing world fueled by the enormous demand to house and shelter billions of people in the upcoming decades, building materials must be utilized that have a lighter climate impact than today’s commonly used energy-intensive building materials.

Is there an alternative to the energy-intensive concrete jungle that is both sustainable and financially viable? How can our built environment enhance, rather than destroy, the natural environment? Part of the solution lies in a recent innovation that uses one of the world’s oldest building materials, wood, with a modern twist: cross-laminated timber, often abbreviated as CLT. These wood-based structures can …

Women In The Trades: An Interview With Connie Ashbrook And Nora Mullane, Liza Morehead

Metroscape

Liza Morehead interviews Connie Ashbrook and Nora Mullane.

Connie Ashbrook is the Executive Director and founder of Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc., Previous to her years with OTI, she worked in the trades for seventeen years as a dump truck driver, carpenter apprentice, and elevator constructor. She was the first woman in Oregon to become licensed as an elevator mechanic.

Nora Mullane has been a union journey-person carpenter, general contractor, building inspector, and City of Portland Bureau of Developments Services supervisor. Nora says that successfully completing her carpenter’s apprenticeship program has served her well throughout her entire career, and life in general, …

Election 2016: Voter Turnout And Results Across Oregon, Kevin Curry

Metroscape

Metroscape went inside the numbers from the 2016 general election. We examined Oregon’s new "motor voter" law to see if it affected turnout and to better understand the new voters added to the rolls in the ‘Beaver State.’ We looked at voter turnout and election results in Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, and Yamhill counties in Oregon and Clark and Skamania counties in Washington to answer several questions about the 2016 General Election.

Periodic Atlas Of The Metroscape: The Geography Of Future Housing, Randy Morris, Sheila Martin

Metroscape

In this edition of the Periodic Atlas, we provide a glimpse of housing construction that has been permitted over the past few years, with a focus on multifamily housing. Focusing on recently-permitted units provides a perspective on how the newest housing is and will be different from existing housing. The type of housing that will be built, where it is built, its characteristics, and its price will shape the Portland region in the years to come.

The Fountain District: Framework Plan, Kara Boden, Alyssa Brook, Jennifer Davidson, Michael Kimble, Julia Lui, Raina Smith, Steven Rosen, Laura Voss, Victoria Weakley

Urban Design Workshop

The 'South Auditorium' neighborhood established itself in the days when loggers and other workers filled the district’s hotels due to its proximity to the river. In the wake of the Great Depression and as the logging trade declined, the area began to fall into disrepair and development shifted away from the Willamette River. By the 1950s, many of its 2,000+ inhabitants were low-income or elderly and living in small, poorly maintained apartments, shuffling from one to the next as they were forced out of their prior home. The neighborhood was also extremely diverse, housing numerous immigrant families, particularly Italian, Jewish, …

Indicators Of The Metroscape: Average Wage Per Job, Institute Of Portland Metropolitan Studies

Metroscape

A chart offering Portland MSA average wage as a percentage of the US metro average wage, 2001-2015.

The Landscape: Tualatin, Liza Morehead

Metroscape

This edition of The Landscape takes a brief look at the city of Tualatin, Oregon, located twelve miles south of Portland, and examines its population, growth, and demographics, as well as defining features and points of interest.

Improving Walkability Through Control Strategies At Signalized Intersections, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri, Andrew Kading, Edward J. Smaglik, Christopher Sobie

TREC Final Reports

As cities and communities nationwide seek to develop Complete Streets that foster livability and accommodate all modes, signal timing control strategies that include pedestrians in the operational decision process are gaining importance. This research tested several efficiency-focused pedestrian treatments – coordination, actuated-coordination, free operation, short cycle lengths – and safety-focused treatment including leading pedestrian intervals and Barnes Dance. Using a software-in-the-loop simulation, the operational impacts of these treatments on all users (vehicles, heavy vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians) at an intersection were evaluated. Results showed that among the efficiency-based treatments, free operation was most beneficial for reducing minor-street pedestrian delays. Both …

Assessing State Efforts To Integrate Transportation, Land Use And Climate, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Zako

TREC Final Reports

Climate change is increasingly recognized as a threat to life on earth. “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” (International Panel on Climate Change, 2014, 8).

The transportation sector accounts for almost one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the United States. Reducing GHG from transportation rests on the “three-legged stool” of improving vehicle efficiency, reducing the carbon content of fuels …

State Efforts To Fight Climate Change, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Zako

TREC Project Briefs

NITC Project Brief: A research project examines efforts in four states to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by the transportation sector.

Introduction To Data Science For Transportation Researchers, Planners, And Engineers, Liming Wang

TREC Final Reports

Building on the successful scientific computing training program offered by the Software Carpentry (http://www.software-carpentry.org/), this course exposes students to the best practices in data science through hands-on lab sessions. Using transportation data and examples, it also aims to help students tackle the challenge of “drinking from a hose” when dealing with the overwhelming amount of data that is increasingly common in transportation research and practice.

Although computing is now an integral part of every aspect of science and engineering, transportation research included, most students of science, engineering, and planning are never taught how to build, use, validate, and share software …

Columbia View Park Expansion Plan: St. Helens, Oregon, Paul Gagliardi, Jonathan Morales, Takayuki Shigematsu, Deme Shor, Nathan Williams

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Vista Planning led public engagement surrounding a waterfront park expansion to help determine how the City should expand and renovate Columbia View Park. Between March and June 2017 Vista Planning ran engagement activities to learn about the local community, build interest around the park expansion and broader framework plan, and ultimately develop a preliminary site plan based on community input.

Rethink Nw 13th: Nw 13th Phased Action Plan, Cassandra Dobson, Courtney Simms, Dylan Johnstone, Geoff Gibson, Russ Doubleday, Santiago Mendez

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

NW 13th has its own set of challenges and opportunities that set it apart from other streets in the Portland Pearl District. This plan refocuses the historic district street around the pedestrian, placing all other modes as secondary to the experience and comfort of those walking on the street. Creating a plan for the pedestrian includes creating stronger bonds with the residents, businesses, and services that run the street’s entire length.

Two appendices: Community Engagement, and Existing Conditions, are included here as supplemental files.

The Lloyd Public Space Plan, Stuart Campbell, Àlvaro Caviedes, Ben Kahn, Raina Smith-Roller, Daniel Scheppke, Layne Wyse

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

This plan defines a set of recommended strategies for enhancing and activating public spaces in Lloyd that fall within three main themes: Safe Lloyd, Collective Lloyd, and Dynamic Lloyd. Implementing these actions will help realize a new vision of Lloyd: A vibrant community filled with activities and amenities for people at different times of the day, days of the week, and months of the year.

The report Measuring Public Space is included here as a supplemental file.

Umatilla Together, Amber Ayers, Belen Herrera, Carlos Callava, Nate Miller, Samuel Roberts, Laura Voss

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Umatilla Together sets the stage for great opportunities and seeks to inspire the residents of Umatilla to imagine what your city could be: a truly desirable place to live, work, learn, and play. Great places are not created by accident. They are the result of a vision, leadership, planning, public investment, unrelenting tenacity on the part of city champions, and strategic, meaningful partnerships.

Summary Umatilla Together plans in English and Spanish are included here as supplemental files.

Brentwood-Darlington: Say Our Name! Neighborhood Assessment And Action Plan, Laura Combs, Samuel Garcia, Olivia Holden, Amanda Howell, Andrea Pastor, Shannon Williams

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

We wrote this plan with two audiences in mind: the city agencies that will be responsible for the large scale capital improvement projects; and engaged neighborhood residents who will be the steadfast advocates driving the direction of Brentwood-Darlington’s evolution. Our hope is the plan serves as a guide and a touchstone—a reminder of where the neighborhood has been, and an arrow pointing the way to the community’s shared vision of the future.

Exploiting New Data Sources To Quantify Arterial Congestion And Performance Measures At A Regional Scale, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Robert L. Bertini, Travis B. Glick, Nicholas B. Stoll, Wei Feng, Bobjot S. Sidhu, Anurag Pande

TREC Final Reports

Transit travel time, operating speed and reliability all influence service attractiveness, operating cost and system efficiency. These metrics have a long-term impact on system effectiveness through a change in ridership. As part of its bus dispatch system (BDS), the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) has been archiving automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) data for all bus trips at the stop level since 1997. In 2014, a new and higher-resolution bus AVL data collection system was fully implemented.

This new AVL system provides stop-level data as well as five-second resolution (5-SR) bus position data between …

Better Outcomes: Improving Accountability & Transparency In Transportation Decision-Making, Robert Zako, Rebecca Lewis

TREC Final Reports

This report aims to help policymakers and staff at all levels of government make transportation investments that serve the public better.

Amazingly, we simply don’t know how effective government spending is at achieving the outcomes the public expects and has been promised! Clearly, taxpayer dollars buy roads, bus service, airports, ferry service, and other transportation facilities and services. But it is unclear how well such investments help get people where they want to go, create jobs, improve public health, support community development, and provide other benefits. In other words, it is uncertain how cost-effectively the means (transportation investments) achieve the …

Issues In Trip Generation Methods For Transportation Impact Estimation Of Land Use Development: A Review And Discussion Of The State-Of-The-Art Approaches, Kristina Marie Currans

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

As agencies develop more robust planning objectives for creating sustainable and livable communities, the research community has continued developing supportive tools and methods to provide more accurate and robust means for estimating transportation impacts for site-level development review. This paper is a review of the state-of-the-art trip generation methods for land use transportation impact estimation. First, it provides an overview of the more recent available and peer-reviewed estimation methods. Second, the authors offer a discussion of the successes of state-of-the-art approaches using common themes of research to identify corresponding consistency with theories of travel behavior and urban economics. These themes …

Accessibility, Income, And Person Trip Generation: Multilevel Model Of Activity At Food Retail Establishments In Portland, Oregon, Kristina Marie Currans, Kelly Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the past decade, the methods for estimating multimodal transportation impacts of urban land use development have improved substantially. One assumption commonly made in these new methods is that overall person-trip rates at similarly-sized establishments of the same land use do not vary across a region. This is an assumption of convenience to permit the adjustment of ITE Trip Generation vehicle trip rates for use in different urban environments. However, this assumption is inconsistent with theories of urban economics, which recognize that businesses pay a premium to locate in areas with high levels of accessibility to attract more customers. In …

St. Johns Housing Action Plan, Jai Singh, Julia Michel, Andres Oswill, Gabriel Rousseau, Ludwig Salzmann, Eric Rutledge

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The St. Johns Housing Action Plan (Action Plan) is designed to serve vulnerable St. Johns residents who are first to feel the impacts of increased housing costs and market pressures. It also intends to capture the support of residents who are not at risk of displacement but realize that the neighborhood change they fear is partly fueled by housing instability.

Do People’S Perceptions Of Neighborhood Bikeability Match “Reality”?, Liang Ma, Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Do people perceive the built environment the same as we objectively measure it? If not, what are the relative roles of the objective versus the perceived environment on bicycling behavior? This study, based on data from Portland, Oregon, explored the match or mismatch between the objective and perceived bicycling environment and how it affects people’s bicycling behavior. The descriptive analysis indicated a fair agreement between perceived and objective measures. Older adults, women having children, less-educated and lower-income persons, and those who bicycle less tended to perceive their high-bikeable environment (measured objectively) as being a low-bikeable environment. In addition to the …