Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Evaluation Of A Transportation Incentive Program For Affordable Housing Residents, Roshin Kurian, Huijun Tan, Nathan Mcneil, John Macarthur

PSU Transportation Seminars

This seminar presents the results from the Transportation Wallet for Residents of Affordable Housing (TWRAH) pilot program launched by the City of Portland’s Bureau of Transportation (PBOT). The program provided a set of transportation incentives for low-income participants including a $308 pre-paid visa card which could be applied to public transit or other transportation services, a free bike share membership, and access to discounted rates on several services. The researchers conducted a survey with the program’s participants to understand how they used the Transportation Wallet and how the program helped them use different modes to get around. The main findings …

Forging Equity In Cities: Using Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (Etod) As A Blueprint For Policy And Practice, Roberto Requejo

PSU Transportation Seminars

Racial equity, wealth building, public health and climate resilience goals are only possible through cross sectional engagement that includes city, state, and regional governments, community-based organizations, and private sector partners. Please join us for this jointly sponsored seminar and workshop to learn about models of community engagement for equitable transportation and housing development. In this seminar, Roberto Requejo, Program Director at Elevated Chicago, will discuss their community organizing and empowerment work to create equitable transit oriented development (eTOD) in Chicago. Their efforts to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into planning and infrastructure investments center on community-focused benefits such as access …

Winning The Fight For Better Bus Service, Steven Higashide

PSU Transportation Seminars

The "right to the city" depends on the right to access the city, and U.S. regions are marked by profoundly unequal access. One of the clearest manifestations of this is the state of U.S. bus transit. Bus service is simple to improve and has vast potential to better people's lives, but has been constrained by the racist planning and politics that shape every American city.

How can we fulfill the promise of better buses and create abundant transit networks that expand access to opportunity? In this seminar, Higashide unpacks the elements of effective bus service – and cites examples from …

Curating Equitable Transportation, Nikotris Perkins

PSU Transportation Seminars

Getting people and goods from here to there is central to the ways we live, work, and play in the United States. The transportation networks we create as planners, engineers, geologists, contractors, consultants, advocates, and citizens involve a multitude of decisions. These decisions have great impact on who can get where, when and how; often connected to our structures of social power. This seminar connects those dots, questions our ability to make change, and calls participants to be actively involved in a transportation system that is curated for those it targets: everyone.

Webinar: Bus Stops: Access And Equity, Keith Bartholomew

TREC Webinar Series

Improving bus stops by providing shelters, seating, signage, and sidewalks is relatively inexpensive and popular among riders and local officials. Making such improvements, however, is not often a priority for U.S. transit providers because of competing demands for capital funds and a perception that amenities are not tied to measurable increases in system effectiveness or efficiency. This webinar focuses on the role that bus stops play as the point of first contact between transit agencies and their potential riders, and how the quality of that contact can influence both ridership and accessibility for riders with mobility-related disabilities. The webinar will …

The Datafication Of Cycling – Effects And Opportunities At The Intersection Of Industry And Transport Policy, Shaun Williams

PSU Transportation Seminars

This seminar will provide a brief overview to Shaun Williams’ "Datafication of Cycling" PhD project. The main aim is to understand how volunteered app data, provided by cyclists, are used to inform transportation planning practice and policy. There is an emerging body of academic work calling for digital aspects of cycling – such as app data - to be considered by transportation authorities. This project builds upon these contributions and asks: Are new forms of cycling data contributing to increased cycling provision and infrastructure? The Datafication of Cycling Project runs from 2017 – 2021 and includes visits to Portland (Oregon) …

The Success Of An Integrated Mobility Strategy: Lessons From The Netherlands For The Pacific West Coast, Lucas Van Der Linde

PSU Transportation Seminars

The Netherlands sets the standard for their multimodal connectivity. It has world's highest use of cycling and an integrated mobility network with an efficient transport system. During this seminar, Lucas will tell more about the Dutch Approach and how this could be applied to the American transportation context.

Lucas will use the case of the Bay area to show this. The Bay Area in California currently faces massive challenges in transportation because of the enormous growth of the region. With the use of a new innovative modelling tool, the Move Meter (http://www.movemeter.com/), Lucas will show the potential of …

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.

Transforming A Historic Highway In Small Town Mosier Into A Vibrant Main Street, Amanda Davidowitz, Kaleidoscope Student Planners

PSU Transportation Seminars

Kaleidoscope Student Planners, a group of six students in the Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning program at Portland State University, are working with Mosier, Oregon’s City Council to develop the Slow Mo’ Main Street Concept Plan. The goal for the project is to develop conceptual designs and programmatic recommendations for historic Highway 30 (which runs through the town), to help ensure that Mosier’s Main Street reflects community priorities, supports a thriving downtown, and creates a safe and inviting corridor for people traveling on foot, by bike and by motor vehicle. During this seminar we will reflect on our process …

Travel Decisions & Their Implications For Urban Transportation: From Campus Transportation To Statewide Modeling, Gulsah Akar

PSU Transportation Seminars

The ability to forecast future transportation patterns under a particular land-use scenario or urban form is key to making informed decisions at the local and regional levels.

Although several researchers have explored the links between the built environment, socio-demographics and travel behavior, a consensus is not reached.

This talk highlights two recent projects. The first project focuses on individuals’ attitudes towards transportation, neighborhood characteristics and their effects on campus commuters’ transit use, and addresses the question whether attitudes, the built environment or a combination of both explains the resulting transit use better.

The second part presents the Regional Land Use …

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 …