Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Using E-Bike Incentive Programs To Expand The Market – Trends And Best Practices, John Macarthur, Cameron Bennett

PSU Transportation Seminars

John MacArthur and Cameron Bennett of Portland State University will be presenting the findings and recommendations from their recent white paper "Using E-Bike Incentive Programs to Expand the Market – Trends and Best Practices." This will include a review of the 50+ current, past, and proposed e-bike purchase incentive programs in North America, including summary statistics and details from exemplary programs. Best practice gained from review of the programs and discussion with program managers, industry professionals, and other stakeholders will be shared. A discussion of the benefits of promoting e-bike uptake in regard to mode shift, VMT, emissions, and human …

Bus-Bike Designs For The Division Transit Project, Derek Abe, Jesse Stemmier

PSU Transportation Seminars

This seminar is brought to you by the Oregon chapter of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP), with support from TREC at Portland State.

Transit stops and stations are a confluence of complementary and competing activities - pedestrians accessing businesses, passengers boarding and alighting, and bicyclists zipping through to their destinations. People are moving in different directions, at different speeds, and need to be able to navigate this space safely and comfortably. A common point of conflict is the bus/bicycle interaction when a transit stop is adjacent to a bike lane. Designs for integrating pedestrian and bicycle …

The Southwest Corridor Light Rail Project, Fiona Cundy, Patrick Sweeney

PSU Transportation Seminars

The Southwest Corridor Light Rail Project is an expansion of the MAX light rail system into Southwest Portland, Tigard and Tualatin. Not only will the project add 11 miles of light rail track and 13 stations to the system, it also includes new bicycle facilities, sidewalks, safer crossings, improvements to local bus service, and significant upgrades to stormwater treatment infrastructure. As a cooperative effort between regional partners, the project is seen as a catalyst to help realize broader shared goals of fostering equitable communities, ensuring healthy environments, and providing robust mobility options for all modes. Currently in the planning and …

Assessing The Barriers To Equity In Smart Mobility Systems: A Case Study Of Portland, Oregon, Aaron Golub, Vivian Satterfield, Michael Serritella, Jai Singh, Senna Phillips

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is an active debate about the potential costs and benefits of emerging “smart mobility” systems, especially in how they will serve communities already facing transportation challenges. This paper describes the results of an assessment of these equity issues in the context of lower-income areas of Portland, Oregon, based on a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research. The study found that by lowering costs and improving service for public transit, ridesharing and active transportation, smart mobility systems could address many of the needs of transportation disadvantaged communities. Similar to those found in other case studies, significant barriers prevent smart mobility …

Making The Seemingly Impossible Project Real Through Local Improvement Districts, Andrew H. Aebi

PSU Transportation Seminars

The planning process identifies community needs but often needs the creative use of financial leverage to make those projects a reality on the ground. Timing is important on Local Improvement District (LIDs), and the window of opportunity is often short.

For Portland's Bureau of Transportation, managing the public's desire for streets in good condition with room to walk and bike safely and accommodating freight movement and population growth can be a tall order. Add in the need to work with water, sewer and underground utilities, and things get complicated.

When needs exceed resources, smart strategies can help fill the gap. …

Pedpdx: Addressing Equity Through Citywide Pedestrian Planning, Michelle Marx, Francesca Patricolo

PSU Transportation Seminars

Pedestrian safety and access is an equity issue. In Portland, inadequate pedestrian infrastructure and traffic safety concerns disproportionately impact low-income communities and people of color. The City is attempting to rectify these inequities through PedPDX, Portland’s new citywide pedestrian plan (anticipated for adoption in Spring 2019). PedPDX prioritizes sidewalk and crossing improvements and other investments, policies, strategies and tools to make walking safer and more comfortable across the city.

Come learn about the strategies PedPDX is using to address transportation equity in Portland, including establishing a data-based prioritization for citywide pedestrian investments, identifying roadway and behavioral characteristics most closely …

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 …

Measuring And Modeling Cyclists’ Comfort And Stress Levels, Miguel Figliozzi

PSU Transportation Seminars

Some researchers have tried to categorize cyclists’ levels of traffic stress utilizing facility or traffic data that can be readily measured in the field, such as motorized travel lanes, travel speeds, and type of bicycle infrastructure.

This seminar will present data and modeling results utilizing two novel data sources:

(a) real-world, on-road measurements of physiological stress as cyclists travel across different types of facilities and

(b) data collected utilizing a smartphone app called ORcycle (http://www.pdx.edu/transportation-lab/orcycle).

This presentation will discuss key findings and potential policy implications.

Evaluating The Level-Of-Service Of Protected Bike Lanes, Nick Foster

PSU Transportation Seminars

Summary: The most recent edition of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) contains analysis procedures for measuring the level-of-service (LOS), also referred to as quality of service, provided by an urban roadway to bicyclists. The method uses different design and operating features of the roadway segment (e.g. width, motor vehicle volumes and speeds) to assess an LOS grade of A (best) to F (worst). These procedures are used by planners and engineers to recommend how existing streets could be retrofitted or new streets designed to better serve people on bicycles (and other modes). However, the current HCM does not include methods …

Guiding Data-Driven Transportation Decisions, Kristin A. Tufte, Basem Elazzabi, Nathan Hall, Morgan Harvey, Kath Knobe, David Maier, Veronika Margaret Megler

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Urban transportation professionals are under increasing pressure to perform data-driven decision making and to provide data-driven performance metrics. This pressure comes from sources including the federal government and is driven, in part, by the increased volume and variety of transportation data available. This sudden increase of data is partially a result of improved technology for sensors and mobile devices as well as reduced device and storage costs. However, using this proliferation of data for decisions and performance metrics is proving to be difficult. In this paper, we describe a proposed structure for a system to support data-driven decision making. A …

The Missing Link: An Evaluation Of Carsharing Portland Inc. Portland, Oregon, Gigi Cooper, Deborah A. Howe, Peter Mye

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Often heard in the mass media and at cocktail parties is that Americans have a love affair with their automobiles. While it may be true that many Americans do love their cars, it is equally true that what they love most about them is the instant mobility that they provide. Car sharing is a concept that addresses the reality ofour need and desire for mobility with a growing desire to be economically and environmentally sensitive and sensible. Car sharing provides access to automobiles without the costs associated with ownership.

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the impacts of …

Urban Decision Making For Transportation Investments: Portland's Light Rail Transit System, Sheldon Edner, G. B. Arrington Jr.

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Investment decisions for large transportation projects are complex, multifaceted phenomena. Generally requiring many years to bring to fruition, such decisions are often reduced at crucial junctures to raw political deals or technical data analysis on limited items. Throughout the range of alternatives considered, analyses completed and policy-making sessions which contribute to such investments, the imagery of a rational, sequential and wholistic decision making process and substance dominates. Recent debate concerning both the desirability of certain transit investments and the extent to which inappropriate intrusion into the decision making province of state and local government have occurred have highlighted at least …