Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Understanding School Travel: How Residential Location Choice And The Built Environment Affect Trips To School, Yizhao Yang, Marc Schlossberg, Robert Parker, Bethany Johnson

TREC Final Reports

This project investigates issues related to parents’ decisions about children’s school transportation. This has become an important area of research due to the growing concerns that increased reliance on private automobile in school travel has led to adverse health impacts on children and negative impacts on environment. This study examines school transportation in the context of where families live and how families make decisions about school travel in the process of choosing their residence.

Using a middle-sized school district in Oregon State, we conducted a 5500-household survey and a number of interviews and focus groups. The study shows that parents …

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 …

A Brief Portrait Of Multimodal Transportation Planning In Oregon And The Path To Achieving It, 1890-1974, Carl Abbott, Sam Lowry

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project was designed to outline transportation chapters of a planned written history of Oregon land use planning, written in ways that would make the transportation planning profession relevant to a popular audience. The writing would focus on stories from the profession, and on historical facts and events in Oregon transportation planning history that would surprise or enlighten popular reading audiences. Technology transfer would occur through publication of one or more written pieces of work.

The result is a topical and historical tale entitled "A Brief Portrait of Multimodal Transportation Planning in Oregon and the Path to Achieving It, 1890-1974." …

Co-Evolution Of Transportation And Land Use: Modeling Historical Dependencies In Land Use And Decision-Making, Lei Zhang, Wei Zu, Mingxin Li

TREC Final Reports

The interaction between land use and transportation has long been the central issue in urban and regional planning. Models of such interactions provide vital information to support many public policy decisions, such as land supply, infrastructure provision, and growth management. Both the transportation and land use systems exhibit historical dependencies in policy decisions. For instance, the expansion of a roadway today will change travel demand patterns, and make certain other roads more or less likely to be expanded in the future. A specific land supply decision made at one point in time, by changing the relative attractiveness of other areas …

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. …

Practical Approximations To Quantify The Impact Of Time Windows And Delivery Sizes On Freight Vmt In Urban Areas, Miguel A. Figliozzi

TREC Final Reports

This paper studies approximations to the average length of Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP). The approximations are valuable for strategic and planning analysis of transportation and logistics problems. The research focus is on VRP with varying number of customers, demands, and locations. This modeling environment can be used in transport and logistics models that deal with a distribution center serving an area with daily variations in the demand. The routes are calculated daily based on what freight is available. New approximations and experimental settings are introduced. Average distance travelled is estimated as a function of the number of customers served and …

Equity Analysis Of Portland’S Draft Bicycle Master Plan – Findings, Jennifer Dill, Brendon Haggerty

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Portland's current bicycle network has brought the city into the national spotlight as a leader in the provision of cycling infrastructure. As the city looks forward to 2030 with ambitions of becoming a truly world-class bicycling city, it is clear that if the Draft Plan is fully implemented, nearly all of the city will be covered by a dense network of bikeways. The question of equity in the future is therefore not so much one of network coverage or lack of coverage, but of project priority and timing of implementation. The current network, while outstanding relative to other cities, nevertheless …

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 …

Evaluation Of Short Duration Unscheduled Absences Among Transit Operators: Trimet Case Study, James G. Strathman, Joseph Broach, Steve Callas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This report analyzes factors contributing to short duration (one to three days) unscheduled absences among operators at TriMet, the transit provider for the Portland, Oregon metropolitan region. The analysis draws on a wide array of operator-specific information recovered by transit ITS technologies in combination with information from the agency’s human resources, scheduling, incident, and customer relations databases. The likelihood of an absence is estimated in relation to personal characteristics, employment status, aspects of assigned work, service delivery and performance indicators, temporal factors, and customer feedback. The findings can be used directly to support extraboard planning practices. More generally, the findings …

Transferring Community-Based, Active Transportation Gis Assessment Tools Nationwide, Marc Schlossberg, Nico Larco

TREC Final Reports

“Livability” has recently been declared one of four top priorities by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), and the USDOT, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have entered into an historic partnership to address the issue. Ultimately, this term refers to the quality of life within one’s community and the ease, comfort, and joy with which one can access places he or she want to go. For most Americans, their neighborhoods have been designed to predominantly accommodate the automobile, and more active forms of transportation such as walking and …

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 …

Improving Travel Information Products Via Robust Estimation Techniques, David Maier, Kristin A. Tufte, Rafael J. Fernández Moctezuma

TREC Final Reports

Traffic-monitoring systems, such as those using loop detectors, are prone to coverage gaps, arising from sensor noise, processing errors and transmission problems. Such gaps adversely affect the accuracy of Advanced Traveler Information Systems. This project will explore models based on historical data that can provide estimates to fill such gaps. We build on an initial study by Mr. Rafael J. Fernandez-Moctezuma, using both a linear model and an artificial neural network (ANN) trained on historical data to estimate values for reporting gaps. These initial models were 80% and 89% accurate, respectively, in estimating the correct speed range, and misclassifications were …

Factors Affecting Behavioral Changes In Response To Road Fees: Some Analyses Of The Effect Of Attitudes, Transit Access, And Fuel Efficiency On Changes In Miles Driven, Anthony M. Rufolo

TREC Final Reports

Objective The Oregon Department of Transportation conducted a test of an innovative technology to replace fuel taxes with mileage fees. In the test, some vehicles were charged a flat fee per mile and others were charged differential fees that were higher for travel in the Portland metropolitan area during weekday peak hours and lower for other travel. I was charged with developing the database for the project and analyzing the behavioral responses of the participants. The database is quite extensive, including responses to three surveys as well as information on mileage in various categories. The experiment ended on April 1, …

Clinton Street Max Visioning, Greg Barlow, Allen David, Hannah Dondy-Kaplan, Tammi Hawkins, Emily Rice, Kellen Smith, Ethan Berleman, Alicia Castro, Kathleen Critchlow, Brett Luttrell, Michael Noonchester

Urban Design Workshop

This report documents the initial analysis and visioning process performed in the area surrounding the Clinton Street Station, which is nestled between Hosford-Abernethy and Brooklyn neighborhoods and the Central Eastside Industrial District.

This project focuses on the future of the Clinton Street Station and how its development will impact the surrounding area over the next 50 years. This task involved acknowledging and balancing the current needs of the various stakeholders. The purpose of this report is to act as a tool for the Hosford-Abernethy Neighborhood Association (HAND) to more adequately understand the opportunities and constraints that the future station area …

Understanding And Measuring Bicycling Behavior: A Focus On Travel Time And Route Choice, Jennifer Dill, John Gliebe

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

With rates of obesity, heart disease, and related health problems increasing in the U.S. many policy makers are looking for ways to increase physical activity in everyday life. Using a bicycle instead of a motor vehicle for a portion of everyday travel could help address these problems. This research aims to fill a gap in the existing literature on the effect of different types of infrastructure, such as bicycle lanes or paths, on bicycling. The project used global positioning system (GPS) technology to record where a sample of 164 adults in the Portland, OR region rode their bicycles. Data was …

Road Ecology Course And Seminar Series, Mark D. Sytsma

TREC Final Reports

The American road network is a major economic investment that is a major organizing force for human activity. The road system has profoundly altered ecological processes and, as a result, it is also an important organizing force for ecosystems. Understanding the ecological consequences of road system design and use is critical to effective engineering and management of road systems to minimize impacts. I propose a new course within Environmental Science and Resources at PSU that will expose upper division undergraduate and graduate students to the fundamental concepts of road ecology through discussion, guest speakers, and field trips. I propose a …

Assessment And Refinement Of Real-Time Travel Time Algorithms For Use In Practice, Kristin A. Tufte, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri

TREC Final Reports

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has set a high priority on the use of existing dynamic message signs (DMS) to provide travel time estimates to the public. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) currently has three DMS in the Portland metropolitan area configured to display travel time information. In the near future, ODOT would like to make travel time estimates available on additional DMS, over the Internet on tripcheck.com and via 511. Travel time estimates are valuable to the traveling public; however, the estimates must be accurate to be useful. The FHWA indicates that 90% accuracy is ideal and suggests …

Needs, Costs, And Funding Alternatives For Transportation Services For Older Adults And People With Disabilities In Urban And Rural Oregon, Jennifer Dill, Margaret B. Neal, Richard Lycan, Ray Delahanty, Talia Jacobson, Kelly Smith, Ariana Tipper

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Portland State University's Institute on Aging and Center for Transportation Studies, along with the Population Research Center, were contracted by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), via the Association of Counties, to project the transportation needs and associated costs for elders and people with disabilities from now to 2030. The study also identified and assessed the feasibility of funding alternatives to address the needs identified.

Conducted by a multidisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students, the project was guided by a work group whose membership consisted of ODOT and Department of Human Services (DHS) employees and other stakeholders, and by …

Active Transportation, Neighborhood Planning And Participatory Gis (Geographic Information System), Marc Schlossberg, Nico Larco

TREC Final Reports

Research on walking, the built environment, and healthy communities is a fairly recent area of inquiry, accelerated over the last ten years by an increased interest in the relationship between urban form and public health. A series of macro-oriented logic models and micro-focused data collection tools have been developed over this time in order to understand this healthy communities issue, as well as operationalize the hypotheses around the connection between the built environment and physical activity. None of these efforts, however, attempt to connect their assessment frameworks and tools with a public involvement process. The last ten years has also …

Techniques For Assessing The Socio-Economic Effects Of Vehicle Mileage Fees, B. Starr Mcmullen, Kyle Nakahara, Smita Biswas, Lei Zhang, Divya Valluri

TREC Final Reports

This project considers the socio-economic impacts of the new highway user fee structure made possible by advanced technology. The fee structure also has implications for land use and healthy communities ( urban/rural, income distributional, and environmental impacts). The 2001 Oregon Legislature created the Road User Fee Task Force (RUFTF) to make recommendations regarding a potential replacement for the gasoline tax. A vehicle mile tax has subsequently been proposed as the replacement. Preliminary work has been devoted to exploring technical and institutional options for implementation of such a charge. OSU researchers have developed the technology and there is a pilot project …

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 …

Linking Experiential Learning To Community Transportation Planning, Robert Parker, Bethany Johnson

TREC Final Reports

This OTREC education proposal will link experiential education with local transportation planning through a collaborative partnership between the University of Oregon and the City of Eugene. Educators have long worked to find pedagogical approaches that yield the best educational results. This is particularly true in the planning disciplines where there is an ongoing dialog among academics and practitioners about how to most effectively train aspiring professionals.1 To provide a mix of academic and practical experience, most planning programs include a mixture of theoretical and applied curriculum. The American Planning Association (APA) recognizes this need and as a result, APA accredited …

Regional Travel Options 2005-06 Program Evaluation, Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Regional Travel Options contracted with the Portland State University Center for Urban Studies to evaluate all program efforts over the 18-month period July 1, 2005 to Dec. 31, 2006. Services provided were shown in relationship to the Regional Travel Options program 5-Year Strategic Plan. The level of participation, satisfaction and the use of alternative travel options were measured where possible. Finally, the extent to which programs supported RTO objectives and connections to other regional goals was assessed. Results included auto-trip reductions. Recommendations for improving data collection were made. Each RTO-partner program is detailed individually in the appendices.

The World Health Organization Age-Friendly Cities Project In Portland, Oregon, Usa, Margaret B. Neal, Alan Kenneth Delatorre

Institute on Aging Publications

The older population is increasing in size in Portland, the state of Oregon, the United States, and the rest of the world. Our cities and regions are vital to the support of this demographic shift through the provision of quality built environments, services, and social, cultural, and civic engagement opportunities promote healthy and active aging.

Over the next 30 years, the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area will see dramatic growth in the proportion of the population that is aged 65 and older. Although the total population will increase by 47 percent, the 65+ population will more than double, growing by over 137 …

Age-Related Shifts In Housing And Transportation Demand : A Multidisciplinary Study Conducted For Metro By Portland State University's College Of Urban And Public Affairs, Final Report, Margaret B. Neal, Nancy J. Chapman, Jennifer Dill, Irina V. Sharkova, Alan Kenneth Delatorre, Kathleen A. Sullivan, Tomoko Kanai, Sheila A. Martin

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Understanding where middle-aged and older adults live, where they are moving, how they get around, and the factors influencing these decisions is essential for planning for the future. To gain an understanding of the impact of age-related shifts on housing and transportation demand, Portland State University's College of Urban and Public Affairs, via its Institute on Aging, was contracted to conduct a review of the literature and to analyze existing key local and national data sources. A multidisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students was assembled and performed the work in the summer of 2006. The literature reviewed and the …

Regional Travel Options 2004-05 Program Evaluation, Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Regional Travel Options contracted with the Portland State University Center for Urban Studies to evaluate all program efforts over the 2004-05 fiscal year. Services provided were shown in relationship to the Regional Travel Options program 5-year strategic plan. The level of participation, satisfaction and the use of alternative travel options were measured where possible. Finally, the extent to which programs supported RTO objectives and connections to other regional goals was assessed. Results included auto-trip reductions. Recommendations for improving data collection were made. Each RTO-partner program is detailed individually in the appendices.

Travel And Transit Use At Portland Area Transit-Oriented Developments (Tods), Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent years there has been a growing interest in using land use planning to reduce reliance on the automobile long-term, through ideas such as smart growth, New Urbanism, pedestrian pockets, and transit-oriented development (TODs). Many growing regions throughout the United States, are turning to these concepts to address problems of traffic congestion and suburban sprawl. However, the effectiveness of such policies in reducing automobile travel and improving livability is largely unknown. Portland was one of the early adopters and is often pointed to as a model for other regions. The Region's 2040 Growth Concept, adopted by the Metro regional …

2035 Regional Transportation Plan Update: A New Look At Transportation - Background Information And Proposed Work Plan For Public Participation, Eco Northwest, Ltd.

Metro Collection

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Comprehensive Plan Amendments On Interchange Traffic In Oregon, James G. Strathman, Thomas J. Kimpel, Paul Roland Leistner, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

In this paper we examine the effects of amendments to local comprehensive plans on interchange performance. Plan amendments over a 15-year period in Oregon resulting in changes to industrial or commercial land use were reviewed to identify those that occurred within one mile of an interchange. Regression analysis was then performed to estimate the impact of nearby plan amendments on subsequent interchange ADT. Plan amendments were found to have a substantial ADT effect on rural interchanges, but their incidence was very limited. In urban core areas, the estimated effect of plan amendments was negligible, possibly due to interchange congestion or …

Impacts Of Trip Permit Program Changes On Vehicle Operations And Inspections, Jennifer Dill

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research project has two inter-related parts: (1) an assessment of the equity of implications of the emissions inspection program in the State of Oregon and elsewhere; and (2) an assessment of the impacts of the new trip permit program on vehicle operations. The study provides a better understanding of the benefits and equity impacts of the inspection program and the recent change to the trip permit system. The findings will be of use to Oregon, as well as all public agencies that oversee vehicle inspection programs throughout the country. The research includes specific recommendations for addressing equity concerns and …