Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

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 …

Bike-Ped Portal: Development Of An Online Nonmotorized Traffic Count Archive, Krista Nordback, Kristin A. Tufte, Nathan Mcneil, Morgan Harvey, Michelle Watkins

TREC Final Reports

Robust bicycle and pedestrian data on a national scale would serve numerous purposes. Access to a centralized nonmotorized traffic count archive can open the door for innovation through research, design and planning; provide safety researchers with a measure of exposure; provide fundamental performance metrics for planning and funding decisions; and allow policymakers and transportation professionals to better support the public’s desire for livable communities. Numerous jurisdictions have initiated nonmotorized traffic count programs. However, many agencies and policymakers, who need data to support investment decisions, are in locations without a centralized count program. This lack of access to count data may …

2016 Annual Population Report Tables (April 15, 2017), Portland State University. Population Research Center, Risa Proehl

Oregon Population Estimates and Reports

The population data in the 2016 annual report tables were compiled by the Population Research Center, Portland State University, 4/18/2017.

The tables in the tabs in this workbook hold the 2016 population estimates produced by the Population Research Center, Portland State University. The July 1 estimates of total population for counties and cities and towns were certified December 15, 2016.

Some tables include the U.S. Census Bureau's decennial Census counts and historical population estimates produced by our Center, and other tables include calculations of change since Census 2010. Also included are population estimates for broad age groups and 5-year age …

Getting To Know The Data: Understanding Assumptions, Sensitivities, Uncertainty, And Being "Conservative" While Using Ite's Trip Generation Data In The Land Development Process, Kristina Marie Currans

PSU Transportation Seminars

Many agencies rely on trip generation estimates to evaluate the transportation impacts of land development in urban and suburban areas alike. Over the past decade, substantial attention has been paid to one national set of guidelines—the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Handbook (2014) and corresponding Manual (2012)—focusing in particular to improve the use of these data and supplementary methods for urban contexts.

The purpose of this study is to explore the typical data provided in the Handbook, within the context of these new improved state-of-the-art methods. As ITE’s describes, “an example of poor professional judgment is to rely …

A City Club Report On Measure 26-189: City Auditor Charter Amendments, City Club Of Portland (Portland, Or.)

City Club of Portland

No abstract provided.

Urbanism Next: How Technology Is Changing Our City, Nico Larco

PSU Transportation Seminars

Advances in technology such as the advent of autonomous vehicles (AV’s), the rise of E-commerce, and the proliferation of the sharing economy are having profound effects not only on how we live, move, and spend our time in cities, but also increasingly on urban form and development itself. These new technologies are changing the ease of transport, the role of transit, and the places we spend our time. These changes will have profound effects on cities including large shifts in land use, changes in street design, a potential reduction on the need for parking, a shift on where we choose …

Design For An Aging Population, Trygve Faste, Kiersten Muenchinger

TREC Final Reports

Older Americans are increasing in numbers and addressing their needs through better public transportation design will improve their quality of life. This study sought to increase understanding of the obstacles faced by people with impairments in vision, hearing and/or mobility, which are common issues for older people, and generate physical product solutions. The research was conducted to conceptualize products, structures and services to reduce or eliminate these obstacles.

With a focus on the Eugene, OR, public bus system, elderly riders were surveyed and interviewed. Designers rode on buses noting what worked well and where problems arose. Five ride-along observations of …

Transportation Cost Index: A Comprehensive Performance Measure For Transportation And Land Use Systems And Its Application In Or, Fl, And Ut, Liming Wang, Jenny H. Liu

TREC Final Reports

MAP-21 and state laws are placing increasing emphasis on using comprehensive transportation performance measures that include mobility, safety, economy, livability, equity, and environmental to guide transportation decision-making. One of the toughest challenges keeping DOTs and MPOs from adopting comprehensive measures in the decision process is the lack of performance measures allowing consistent comparison of multimodal performance over time and across geographic areas. This project advances a transportation cost index (TCI) initially proposed by Oregon DOT from a proof-of-concept stage to implementation and operational use at the state, MPO, and community levels. After pilot tests and early adoption in Oregon, we …

Gentrification And Displacement: An Environmental Justice Challenge For Social Work In Urban Environments, Eileen M. Brennan, Kevin Jones, Ryan Elizabeth Bender

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

This chapter presents a lesson which includes a case study highlighting the social, economic, and environmental injustices associated with the gentrification of Northeast Portland, Oregon, US. The reader will then engage in an exercise, which includes reviewing the suggested video clip and news article segment highlighting experiences of families caught up in gentrification in Northeast Portland. Finally, the reader will work through the associated questions and activities to achieve the learning outcomes.

Stacking Functions: Identifying Motivational Frames Guiding Urban Agriculture Organizations And Businesses In The United States And Canada, Nathan Mcclintock, Michael Simpson

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

While a growing body of scholarship identifies urban agriculture's broad suite of benefits and drivers, it remains unclear how motivations to engage in urban agriculture (UA) interrelate or how they differ across cities and types of organizations. In this paper, we draw on survey responses collected from more than 250 UA organizations and businesses from 84 cities across the United States and Canada. Synthesizing the results of our quantitative analysis of responses (including principal components analysis), qualitative analysis of textual data excerpted from open-ended responses, and a review of existing literature, we describe six motivational frames that appear to guide …

Portland Msa Economic & Population Outlook April 2017, Thomas Potiowsky, Portland State University. Northwest Economic Research Center

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

NERC's biannual forecast of employment, income, housing permits, and house prices for the Portland MSA. The April release also includes the annual forecast of population and households.

Two Forecasting Models For Portland, Oregon: Hamilton –Perry Vs Metroscope, Richard Lycan

Institute on Aging Publications

Presentation focuses on population forecasting models and compares the Metroscope Forecasting Model and the Hamilton-Perry Model.

Dynamic Assignment Models And Their Application In The Portland Metro Region, Peter G. Bosa

PSU Transportation Seminars

Metro's Research and Modeling Services Program is responsible for the development, maintenance, and application of travel demand models for application in long-range planning efforts in the Portland metropolitan region.

Representation of traffic—both vehicular and transit—plays an integral role in the travel demand modeling process. Complex software is required to assign vehicles and transit users to transportation networks to determine viable options available to travelers, costs associated with those options, and sets of routes by which travelers might navigate their trips.

Metro's current static assignment model has traditionally sufficed for use with Metro's four-step travel demand model. However, static assignments have …

Draining The Swamp: A Guide For Outsiders And Career Politicians, Carl Abbott

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

What do Ron Paul, Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump have in common? They’ve all promised to “drain the swamp” of Washington politics.

These ambitious “hydraulic engineers” rely on a phrase that is deeply mired in our political discourse. The metaphor gets its clout from the notion that Washington was built in an actual physical swamp, whose foul landscape has somehow nourished rotten politics.

The assumption is just plain wrong: Washington was never a swamp, as I’ve discovered in exploring its first two centuries.

Regulating Pavement Dwellers: The Politics Of The Visibly Poor In Public Space, Lauren Marie Larin

Dissertations and Theses

Many researchers argue the increasing reliance on sit/lie ordinances to regulate homeless people's use of public space is one in a suite of neoliberal policies that shape the geographies of public space in cities to serve the needs of global capital. However, these policies are developed at the local, not global, level as specific actors make claims in the public sphere that communicatively shape policy formation. Through comparative case study, this research asks, how do different actors, situated in specific local and global contexts, influence the adoption of sit/lie ordinances?

I examine two cases of policymaking in Portland and San …

Addressing Data Challenges For Bicycle Crash Analysis, Eleni Christofa

PSU Transportation Seminars

Although an increasing number of separated bicycle facilities have been appearing across the US over the last few years, the majority of bicyclists are still traveling on roadways shared with motorized vehicles.

As a result, bicycles are essentially double exposed to safety risk, due to their interactions with both motorized vehicles and other bicycles. In addition to this double exposure, data challenges–such as a lack of continuous counts and bicycle crash data—complicate the assessment of bicycle safety further.

This research presents a bicycle crash analysis framework for estimating bicycle crash rates accounting for both bicycle and motorized vehicle exposure as …

Big Data And The Future Of Travel Modeling, Greg Macfarlane

PSU Transportation Seminars

New technologies such as smart phones and web applications constantly collect data on individuals' trip-making and travel patterns. Efforts at using these "Big data" products, to date, have focused on using them to expand or inform traditional travel demand modeling frameworks; however, it is worth considering if a new framework built to maximize the strengths of big data would be more useful to policy makers and planners.

In this presentation Greg Macfarlane will present a discussion on elements of travel models that could quickly benefit from big data and concurrent machine learning techniques, and results from a preliminary application of …

North Clackamas School District Population And Enrollment Forecasts 2017-18 To 2026-27, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Scott Stewart, Xi Yang

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC). The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the North Clackamas School District (NCSD) in recent years and forecasts of district-wide and individual school enrollments for the 2017-18 to 2026-27 school years.

Mcminnville School District Enrollment Forecasts 2017-18 To 2026-27, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Xi Yang

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC) for the McMinnville School District (MSD). The study includes analysis of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the District in recent years and forecasts of district‐wide enrollments for a ten year period from 2017‐18 to 2026‐27 and of individual schools for a five year period from 2017‐18 to 2021‐22.

Oregon City School District Enrollment Forecasts 2017-18 To 2026-27, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Scott Stewart, Xi Yang

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents a range of three scenarios of district‐wide enrollment forecasts by grade level for the Oregon City School District (OCSD) for the 10 year period between 2017‐18 and 2026‐27. Each enrollment forecast scenario is related to population forecasts that incorporate different assumptions about growth within the District, with the primary differences being the contribution of net migration to the District’s population and age distribution. Individual school forecasts consistent with the middle range scenario are also presented for the 10 year period.

Metropolitan Centers: Evaluating Local Implementation Of Regional Plans And Policies, Richard D. Margerum, Keith Bartholomew, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Parker, Stephen Dobrinich

TREC Final Reports

The Denver and Salt Lake City Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) have embarked upon regional visioning strategies that promote development around higher density, mixed use centers with current or future access to transit. This study examines the programs and policies in the Salt Lake City and Denver regions to examine regional vision influence on local planning and the opportunities and constraints facing centers. The research team analyzed local plans over the past several decades, interviewed planners, and examined demographic, land use and transportation characteristics in select centers across the region. We found that the regional vision had a moderate influence on …

A Model For Better Crosswalk Safety, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Project Briefs

NITC researchers from Portland State University developed models to find what factors affected vehicles’ compliance with pedestrian safety laws.

The results suggest that treatments discouraging accelerating toward a crosswalk could help increase pedestrian safety.

Metropolitan Centers Mean Smart Growth, Richard D. Margerum, Rebecca Lewis, Keith Bartholomew

TREC Project Briefs

In this study, a multidisciplinary team from the University of Oregon and the University of Utah examined regional metropolitan center programs and policies in the Salt Lake City and Denver regions. The goal of the study was to examine this topic on two levels. First, to learn how and why local governments have adopted the concepts of metropolitan centers over time and the related supporting and constraining factors. Second, to understand how demographics, land use, and transportation choices have changed over time in the designated centers.

Making Every Mode Count In Washington State, Krista Nordback

TREC Project Briefs

A NITC report by Krista Nordback of Portland State University offers a step toward establishing a performance metric by which statewide progress with respect to bicycling and walking can be evaluated. The Washington State Pedestrian and Bicycle Miles Traveled Project discusses the relative merits of three different methods which can be used to compute bicycle miles traveled (BMT) and pedestrian miles traveled (PMT).

Destination Portland: Post-Great Recession Migration Trends In The Rose City Region, Jason R. Jurjevich, Greg Schrock, Jihye Kang

Publications, Reports and Presentations

This report explores how individuals decide to move to Portland, why they stay and how the region’s growth challenges might introduce costs that disproportionately burden people of color and young people of lower socioeconomic status.

Modeling And Analyzing The Impact Of Advanced Technologies On Livability And Multimodal Transportation Performance Measures In Arterial Corridors: Phase 2, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Chawalit Tipagornwong

TREC Final Reports

Transportation corridors are complex systems. Tradeoffs, particularly in terms of traffic mobility, transit performance, accessibility and pedestrian interactions, are not well understood.When the focus is on motorized vehicle mobility and throughput, high traffic or vehicle speeds are desirable because at high speeds more vehicles can flow per unit of time and roadway section. However, high traffic/vehicles speeds are not desirable for pedestrians who have to cross urban arterials. In particular, pedestrians can be highly vulnerable at unsignalized, marked crosswalks where pedestrians have the right of way but where drivers’ yield rates are significantly lower than at signalized intersections. Pedestrians are …

Estimating Walking And Bicycling At The State Level, Krista Nordback, Mike Sellinger, Taylor Phillips

TREC Final Reports

Estimates of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) drive policy and planning decisions for surface transportation. No similar metric is computed for cycling and walking. What approaches could be used to compute such a metric on the state level? This report discusses three such approaches, identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each, and applies them to Washington State. The first approach employs travel survey data. The second approach is sample-based using pedestrian and bicycle count data. The third approach is an aggregate demand model approach using demographic data combined with count data. Due to data limitations, none of these methods could be …

Exploring The Positive Utility Of Travel And Mode Choice, Patrick Allen Singleton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Why do people travel? We traditionally assume traveling is a means to an end, travel demand is derived (from the demand for activities), and travel time is to be minimized. Recently, scholars have questioned these axioms, noting that some people may like to travel, use travel time productively, enjoy the experience of traveling, or travel for non-utilitarian reasons. The idea that travel can provide benefits and may be motivated by factors beyond reaching activity destinations is known as “the positive utility of travel” or PUT.

This study presents a conceptual and empirical look at the positive utility of travel and …