Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Why Your City Needs A Car Master Plan, Cathy Tuttle

PSU Transportation Seminars

In 2022, cars are ubiquitous and completely embedded into America’s economy and social fabric. American cities don’t make car plans, but all transportation plans – whether they are for people who walk, bike, take transit, run freight or delivery businesses – are all written in response to cars. Transportation planning is all about cars; supporting cars or constraining cars. How did our cities evolve into places where cars dominate, and where can we go from here? To move to a new paradigm, cities need to acknowledge car dominance and focus on cars with the same rigor they do other modal …

Next Steps For Portland’S Neighborhood Greenways, Scott Cohen

PSU Transportation Seminars

Portland's neighborhood greenways are a key component of the city's transportation system and future. Join PBOT's new neighborhood greenway coordinator to learn how this facility type developed, near-term plans for improvements, and what the future holds for these unique bikeways.

Participants will gain a better understanding of:

• The history of Portland's neighborhood greenways
• PBOT's evaluation process for the neighborhood greenway system
• Where the system is thriving and where PBOT sees deficiencies
• How PBOT plans to address the system's development over the next three to five years

Webinar: Contextual Guidance At Intersections For Protected Bicycle Lanes, Christopher Monsere, Nathan Mcneil

TREC Webinar Series

Separated bike lanes have become increasingly common around the United States as cities seek to attract the new riders, including people who want to ride but limit their riding because they do not feel comfortable riding with motor vehicle traffic. Planners and engineers are working to identify contextually appropriate, safe, and comfortable designs for intersection locations, where bicyclist paths cross the paths of turning vehicles as well as cross-traffic. This research employed a combination of user surveys and simulations to anticipate expected bicyclist and turning vehicle interactions and bicyclist comfort based on design type and volumes. Findings examine which types …

Enhanced Transit Corridors In Portland's Central City, Gabe Graff, Kelly Betteridge

PSU Transportation Seminars

Over the past two years, the Portland Bureau of Transportation and TriMet have joined forces to identify, design and build capital and operational treatments to help buses move more quickly and reliably through Portland’s increasingly congested Central City. Already the densest concentration of people and jobs in Oregon, Portland’s Central City is growing fast and increasing the speed and reliability of transit is key to achieving our City and region’s transportation, climate and livability goals. Working in partnership on PBOT’s Central City in Motion plan and TriMet and Metro’s Enhanced Transit Corridor program, the two agencies have identified a series …

The Application Of Smart Phone, Weight-Mile Truck Data To Support Freight-Modeling, Performance Measures And Planning, Katherine E. Bell, Miguel A. Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Oregon is one of the few states that currently charge a commercial truck weight-mile tax (WMT). The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has developed a data-collection system – Truck Road Use Electronics (TRUE) – to simplify WMT collection. The TRUE system includes a smart phone application that collects and records Global Positioning System (GPS) data. The TRUE data has enormous advantages over GPS data used in previous research due to its level of geographic detail and the potential to also integrate trip origin and destination, vehicle class, and commodity-type data. This research evaluates the accuracy of the TRUE data and …

Traffic Safety Data: Expanding The Archive, Christopher Monsere, Myenwoo Lim, Chengxin Dai, Xiaowei Wu

TREC Project Briefs

A project expands the capabilities of the Oregon Traffic Safety Data Archive, a tool for helping traffic safety engineers and planners reduce the occurrence of traffic accidents.

Design Of A Dynamic Activity Travel Modeling System For Metro, John Gliebe

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Trip-based models are no longer adequate for some of the more complex questions. They fail to account for time of day sensitivity, dynamic congestion effects, variable pricing and tolls, and the reliability of both highways and transit. Existing activity/tour-based models lack the enhanced temporal element provided by a more dynamic, activity-based microsimulation. DASH is the next-generation model being developed by the Metro Research Center.

Providing Capacity In Rural Communities: Planning For Alternative Transportation, Megan Smith

TREC Final Reports

This technology transfer proposal linked service learning with rural multimodal transportation planning through a collaborative partnership between University of Oregon (UO) experiential learning programs and three rural Oregon communities. As this planning and technical support to rural communities occurred, lessons learned were gathered and will support future servicelearning projects focused on transportation planning. The primary products for this project are the: (1) Completion of multimodal transportation planning projects that increase rural community capacity; and (2) a website with resources for communities, faculty and students. Three further outcomes were: (1) Increased capacity for transportation planning in rural communities; (2) Increased capacity …

Rural Transit In Oregon: Current And Future Needs, Jennifer Dill, Margaret B. Neal

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of the research reported was to identify the current status and needs for general public transportation in Oregon’s rural areas, as well as opportunities and barriers (e.g., funding, governance issues, and leadership) to expanding services over a 20 year period. Oregon is a largely rural state. This lack of density poses problems for the provision of public transit, whether through fixed route or demand response service. People living in the rural areas and who lack cars and access to public transportation are at a strong disadvantage. With no access to these transit resources, they may be limited to …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of The Safety Investment Program (Sip) Policies For Oregon, Christopher M. Monsere, Lisa Diercksen, Karen Dixon, Michael Liebler

TREC Final Reports

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Safety Investment Program (SIP) seeks to allocate safety funds in a manner that maximizes safety benefits on preservation projects and at specific high-crash locations. The SIP philosophy targets highway sections for investment with the premise that the most effective use of safety dollars to save lives is to invest in areas where the most people are being killed or seriously injured in traffic crashes. The SIP categorizes five-mile roadway sections on a 1-5 rating based on the number of crashes in a three year period; with five (5) being the most crash prone section. …

Expanding Service Learning Models In Transportation, Robert Parker

TREC Final Reports

This OTREC education project links experiential education with local transportation planning through a collaborative partnership between the University of Oregon, the Lane Transit District, and the cities of Eugene and Springfield. The Community Planning Workshop (CPW) is an experiential/service learning program affiliated with the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. Through this service learning program, graduate students learn professional planning skills while assisting communities in actual planning and policy projects.

The project results include: (1) the completion of the following six deliverables: EmX Evaluation Framework Document, EmX Stakeholder Perceptions Document, Bus Rapid Transit Case …

Developing Corridor-Level Truck Travel Time Estimates And Other Freight Performance Measures From Archived Its Data, Christopher M. Monsere, Michael Wolfe, Heba Alawakiel, Max Taylor Stephens

TREC Final Reports

The objectives of this research were to retrospectively study the feasibility for using truck transponder data to produce freight corridor performance measures (travel times) and real-time traveler information. To support this analysis, weigh-in-motion data from each of the twenty-two stations in Oregon were assembled, processed, and uploaded in the WIM data archive is housed under the Portland Transportation Archive Listing (PORTAL) umbrella at Portland State University’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab. Nearly 42,000,000 truck records were successful uploaded to the archive dating back to July 2005. Two separate algorithms necessary for this research were scripted, tested, and validated. The closest stations …

Measuring The Impact Of Light Rail Systems On Single Family Home Values: A Hedonic Approach With Gis Application, Hong Chen, Anthony M. Rufolo, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

In theory, proximity to a light rail (LRT) may have two different effects on residential property values. On the one hand, accessibility (proximity to the LRT stations) may increase property values. On the other hand, nuisance effects (proximity to the LRT line and stations) may decrease property values. Existing empirical studies are inconclusive, and failure to separate the effects of accessibility from the nuisance effects may explain some of the ambiguity. This paper examines the impact of the light-rail system (MAX) in Portland, Oregon, on single-family home values using distance to rail stations as a proxy for accessibility and distance …

Exploring And Visualizing The Census Transportation Planning Package (Ctpp) Urban And Statewide Elements, Thomas J. Kimpel, Kenneth Dueker, Philip J. Wuest, David R. Brooks

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The purpose of this report is to document the types of transportation analyses that can be undertaken with the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP). In particular, this report focuses on exploring and visualizing the various elements of the CTPP data set. It is structured as a series of small-scale studies that have incorporated the use of CTPP data in order to generate information on a number of transportation-related topics. A general overview of each study is given, along with a description of the CTPP data used in the analysis, and a brief interpretation of the results. It is hoped that …

Augmented Analysis Of Oregon's Special Need Transportation Providers, Janice Dean, Sheldon Edner, Kenneth Dueker, Transportation Northwest (Transnow)

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This analysis extends the work originally provided in the 1988 Oregon Public Transportation Study by the same authors. The intent is to focus attention on a particularly diverse segment of the public transportation community, special need providers (SNT), in an effort to further specify and define their nature and role in the public transportation system. The results of this analysis are intended to assist the Oregon Department of Transportation, Public Transit Division, with its efforts to implement Oregon's public transportation programs and to provide a basis for further specifying additional research needs in this area.

1988 Oregon Public Transportation Study, Sheldon Edner, Kenneth Dueker, Janice Dean

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Oregon continues to face challenges in public transportation. The lack of a consistent and comprehensive framework of state policy is making local efforts to meet public transportation demands harder and fails to exploit economic and transportation opportunities for improving the vitality of the state. The absence of continuous and stable state financial assistance has weakened the state/local partnership in providing public transportation services and kept mobility for many Oregonians at a minimal level. Finally, as the federal role in funding transportation declines the need for aggressive state leadership increases. The following recommendations for Legislative and Executive action are offered as …

Governing And Managing Multi-Modal Transit Agencies In A Multicentric Era, Sy Adler, Sheldon Edner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

We explore the dynamics of governing and managing multi-modal regional transit agencies through a case study of the Tri-County Metropolitan Transit District (Tri-Met), which provides bus and rail transit services to the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area (see map). Along with other similarly constituted firms in the United States transit industry, Tri-Met confronts the challenge of providing service in a geopolitical context that is quite different than when the agency was created. The critical new element in Tri-Met's operating environment is the emergence of several suburban business centers that effectively compete with the Portland central business district (CBD), and are seeking …

Ridesharing In Oregon: A Descriptive Analysis, Jan Monroe, Sheldon Edner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This report provides an overview of the major rideshare programs in the cities of Portland, Salem, and Eugene. A general description of the setting, a brief history, and the current program is provided for each city.

The cities of Portland, Salem, and Eugene all have existing rideshare programs that include a matching service for prospective participants and a discounted parking cost program for vehicles used for ridesharing. The two hospitals reviewed (Good Samaritan and The Oregon Health Sciences University), in addition to the matching service and parking discounts, also subsidize mass transit as an alternative . Good Samaritan and the …

The Impact Of Emme-2 On Urban Transportation Planning: A Portland Case Study, Kenneth Dueker, Rishinath L. Rao, Andy Cotugno, Keith Lawton, Richard Walker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The impact of interactive graphics and an improved multimodal transportation planning software package on the urban t ransportation planning process and organization responsible for the planning is assessed. The focus is on the results of applying the new technology, which allows the planning organization to increase capacity to conceptualize and evaluate alternative courses of action. This emphases on the results of planning raises the likelihood of changes in the way transportation decision making occurs.

An advanced interactive graphics system for urban transportation planning process was adopted by the Metropolitan Service District (METRO) of Portland, Oregon, a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). …