Digital Commons Network^™

Wasted Space: Using Parking Lots & Vacant Land To Improve Neighborhood Completeness, Ryan Martyn

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

This study conducts a spatial analysis of Portland, Oregon, focusing on leveraging underutilized areas like parking lots and vacant land—termed "wasted space"—to improve the city's completeness. Central to this investigation is the concept of a "complete neighborhood," characterized by access to daily necessities within convenient active transportation trip. This comprehensive idea encompasses walkability, equitable access to services, and sustainability.

This paper aims to redefine the concept of a complete neighborhood with precision and delve into its implications. The research looks at five regional, town, and neighborhood centers as defined by the city of Portland. These centers act as pivotal hubs …

Power To The Pedal: Assessing Barriers To Adoption Of Closed-Access Bike Share In Low-Income Communities, Jordan Del Valle Tonoian

University Honors Theses

Power to the Pedal is a fare-free, closed-access e-bike share program, operating more similarly to a lending library. The program aims to provide two low-income communities access to a reliable, low-emissions, electric assisted, active transportation option. The research conducted aimed to identify barriers faced by the community to adopting the bike sharing program. A survey and interviews conducted found that infrastructure, safety, cargo, financial ability, household structure, health, and culture all play a role when deciding when to use the program. Several recommendations are made to the program owner, operator, and other stakeholders both about improving the program directly, and …

Hillsboro, Bike And Pedestrian Implementation: Recommended Strategy, Maddy Poehlein, Chris Corral, Sierra Willems, Ciara Williams, Lise Ferguson, Shane Seaman

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

This project presents a contextualized Bike and Pedestrian Implementation Strategy for the City of Hillsboro. The goal was to develop an actionable approach to expand and improve the City’s active transportation network. The strategy incorporates 23 criteria for project selection informed by existing conditions and the City’s priorities. Finally, the report culminates with a recommended implementation approach using two top scoring projects as examples.

The Central Role Of Perceived Safety In Connecting Crash Risk Factors And Walking Behavior, Kyu Ri Kim

Dissertations and Theses

Despite advanced policies, plans, and facilities, many pedestrians are still injured and killed in traffic crashes in the United States. To improve pedestrian safety and the walking environment, the relationship between surrounding crash risk factors and perceived safety that influence people's behavior needs to be studied. This study aims to examine pedestrian crash risk factors, the relationship between crash risk factors and perceived safety, measured as threatened experiences and safety attitudes, and the relationship between safety attitudes and walking behavior.

The analysis used data from three primary sources: (1) an original survey of 551 residents in 10 neighborhoods in Oregon …

Under The Influence Of Parents: A Longitudinal Study Of Children’S Walking, Kyu Ri Kim, Jennifer Dill

Student Research Symposium

Researchers have studied children's active travel; however, they have mostly been cross-sectional studies dealing with commuting to school and parental attitudes. To find ways to promote children's active travel, this longitudinal study uses panel data (two time periods) to examine how parents' actual walking and safety perception correlated with children’s walking. Using data from 240 children aged 4-16 and their parents in Portland, Oregon, we estimated a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) to analyze the continuous relationships. We found that parents with more positive attitudes toward their walking walked more, and their children also walked more in both periods. In addition, …

A Survey Of North American Electric Bicycle Owners, Cameron Steven Bennett

Dissertations and Theses

Rapid recent growth in the popularity of electric bicycles (e-bikes) has captured the attention of transportation researchers and policymakers seeking safe, sustainable, and active alternatives to conventional transportation modes. This thesis presents an investigation of e-bike owners in North America, complementing previous efforts in 2013 and 2017, and suggests implications for North American transportation planning.

An online survey was distributed to e-bike owners in the United States and Canada through email outreach, purchase incentive programs, and social media. The survey included questions on the respondents’ demographics, e-bikes, purchase decisions, travel behavior, perceptions of e-bikes, crash experience, maintenance needs, and receipt …

What Drives Housing Choices Of Refugees And Immigrants?, Diane Mitschke, Anne Nordberg, Stephen Mattingly, Katherine Kitchens, Yasmin Al-Zubi, Farah Naz

TREC Project Briefs

When newcomers to the US initially settle, if their chosen location does not meet their expectations or needs, that often propels them to relocate. To determine what helps drive those transition decisions, the researchers interviewed people if they fulfilled one of these requirements:

• They were members of the Dallas County community who were planning to move in the next five years.

• They had recently (within the past five years) moved from their initial residence following their arrival in Dallas County.
• They also had to be immigrants to or refugees in the US who were at least eighteen years old. Out …

Housing Choice, Transportation Equity, And Access To Opportunities In Refugee And Immigrant Communities, Diane Mitschke, Anne Nordberg, Stephen Mattingly, Katherine Kitchens

TREC Final Reports

Mobility directly impacts access to opportunities for all protected classes; however, transportation planning and public transit agencies and housing authorities rarely coordinate affordable housing and the transportation system planning decisions. This lack of coordination often leads to mismatches between access to opportunities and affordable housing. Safe access to employment, quality schools, and healthcare represent a few of the many factors that may influence housing choice. For most households with budget constraints, all of these factors may not be achievable. While existing research documents the mismatch between affordable housing and access to opportunities, the role that mobility plays in residential selection …

Data From: Active Transportation Counts From Existing On-Street Signal And Detection Infrastructure, Sirisha Kothuri, Patrick Allen Singleton, Mahyar Vahedi Saheli, Elizabeth Yates, Joseph P. Broach

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Datasets

This study’s objective was to use data from existing traffic signal infrastructure to estimate pedestrian volumes. Pedestrian push-button actuations were collected from signal controller logs at 49 intersections in western Oregon and an additional 16 intersections in eastern Oregon. These actuations were then compared to observed pedestrian counts, totaling over 34,000 people, obtained from video recordings. After exploring various options, a simple quadratic relationship was modeled using a single measure of pedestrian signal activity: the number of push-button presses (filtered to remove multiple presses within 15 seconds). The model’s predictions showed a correlation of 0.86 with observed pedestrian volumes and …

App-Based Data Collection To Characterize Latent Transportation Demand Within Marginalized And Underserved Populations, Noelle L. Fields, Courtney Cronley, Stephen Mattingly, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, David Levine, Nithisha Gudipati, Cristine Highfill, Mary Kris Stringfelllow, Anna O'Dell, Rebecca Cole, Melody Huslage

TREC Final Reports

Our interdisciplinary team refined an app prototype, MyAmble, to gather data related to quantity of transportation disadvantage and latent demand, and to identify psycho-social-economic corollaries. MyAmble utilizes a traditional travel diary format but expands the type of trips measured to include 1) completed trips, 2) missed trips, and 3) latent travel demand. The app also measures the real-time perceived impact of transportation behaviors (realized and latent) on participants’ physical health, mental health, social engagement, and employment/academics. Finally, the app has a text-messaging feature, Travel Buddy, that is used to increase participant engagement and retention over longitudinal data collection. The project …

Understanding Connections Between Mobility, Transportation, And Quality Of Life In Refugee Communities In Tucson, Arizona, Orhon Myadar, Arlie Adkins, Maia Ingram, Nicole Iroz-Elardo

TREC Final Reports

In this multidisciplinary research project we aimed to study mobility challenges that refugees in Tucson, AZ, experience after their resettlement. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from interviews and survey data, we argue that mobility shapes the ways refugees foster social connections, attain employment and access educational opportunities. Accordingly, barriers to mobility negatively impact refugees’ perception of well-being in post resettlement. However, these challenges are not experienced evenly. Nor are refugees passive subjects who lack agency in overcoming various barriers they experience. The study reveals the resilience of the refugee community in navigating the intersectional challenges they confront related to …

Marginalized Populations’ Access To Transit: Journeys From Home And Work To Transit, Miriam J. Abelson, Ivis Garcia, Sadika Khan, Amy Lubitow, Nicholas Puczkowskyj, Marisa A. Zapata

TREC Final Reports

Previous scholarship has shown that low-income individuals who also might identify as racial, ethnic, and gender minorities (such as transgender and gender nonconforming) are more likely to be dependent on public transportation. What remains understudied is how these marginalized groups, given their intersectional identities of oppression, might experience transit. The primary research question guiding this project is how do people with intersecting marginal identities experience social exclusion as they travel via mass transit? To answer the above research question, we employed a photovoice methodology and video-call interviewing, in Portland, OR, and Salt Lake City, UT. Across these two sites we …

Current Vehicle Fleet Inventory And Future Implementation Of A Centralized Electric Fleet At Portland State University, Dane Kovaleski

Environmental Science and Management Professional Master's Project Reports

As the effects of climate change continue to impact the world, many institutions have developed climate action goals to reduce their effects on the environment. Portland State University (PSU) has committed to an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2040. A part of this commitment must include looking at the contributions of transportation on campus to reduce carbon emissions. According to a greenhouse gas emissions report done by the Campus Planning and Sustainability Office in 2016, transportation contributed to 12% of total greenhouse gas emissions on campus.

This project aims to evaluate the management …

Transportation Behavior Among Older Vietnamese Immigrants In The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex: Well-Being, Geospatial Mobility, And Potential Indicators For Ride Providers’ Geospatial Burden, Rebecca L. Mauldin, Stephen Mattingly, Mahshid Haque, John P. Connolly, Latisha Thomas, Zachary Tarbet, Farzana Chowdhury, Rupal Parekh

TREC Final Reports

Nearly 4.6 million immigrants aged 65 and older live in the United States. This population is expected to more than triple in size by 2050. A lack of culturally appropriate transportation solutions for older immigrants creates disparities in access to services for older immigrant populations, increasing their risk of social isolation and reduced physical and mental health. A growing number of older immigrants live in low-density urban environments, which are characterized by high automobile dependency and limited public transportation. In these environments, older immigrants are likely to depend on others to provide private transportation. Negative aspects of this reliance on …

Sustaining Multimodal Choices: Examining Travel Behavior For Non-Work Trips Beyond Covid-19, Yizhao Yang, Rebecca Lewis

TREC Final Reports

Increasing the usage of sustainable travel modes requires changes in both environmental and psychological dimensions. A knowledge gap exists concerning the mechanism via which various factors interact to shape travel decision. Gaining such knowledge requires our ability to examine people’s behavioral adjustment in reaction to environmental and psychological changes or interventions.

This project uses COVID-19 as a natural experiment, treating the significant disruption induced by the pandemic as an intervention to study changes in travel behaviors and adoption of different travel choices following the COVID pandemic. This project builds upon a 2020 study conducted by the PI’s. It adopts a …

A Gridded Co2 Emissions Inventory For Portland, Or, James Eckhardt Powell

Dissertations and Theses

Here we develop a new high resolution inventory of CO₂ emissions for the three Oregon counties which comprise the bulk of the City of Portland, Oregon, USA. Locally curated and long-running data collection efforts for on-road traffic activity and emission rates are used to model on-road emissions, and a new survey of the area's natural gas network informs the building energy model. The inventory estimates total emissions of CO₂ for each hour of the year 2018 in the on-road, residential, and commercial building sectors at 1 km² resolution. The onroad inventory compares to within 3% with an …

Explore Regional Variation In The Effects Of Built Environment On Driving With High Resolution U.S. Nationwide Data, Liming Wang

PSU Transportation Seminars

There have been numerous studies on the relationship between travel behavior and built environment over the last few decades. Prior studies have mostly focused on producing point estimates of model coefficients and ended up with a wide range of estimates for the built environment elasticity of travel behavior, including household Vehicle Miles Traveled. With few exceptions, previous studies use data from a single region or a small number of regions, and thus are not able to sufficiently investigate the regional variation in built environment elasticity.

On the other hand, a few papers have addressed the heterogeneity of elasticity among different …

The Use And Influence Of Health Indicators In Municipal Transportation Plans, Kelly Christine Rodgers

Dissertations and Theses

Transportation is an important social determinant of health that shapes the places where people "live, learn, work, and play" to the extent that an individual's zip code better predicts their health than their genetic code. Researchers and practitioners have called for the use of health indicators in transportation as one way to integrate public health concerns into transportation. The underlying hope is that new organizational routines, such as measuring and tracking indicators, can translate policy goals into policy practice. However, it is unclear how indicators are used and what impact they have on policy--the creation or modification of policies and …

The Use And Influence Of Health Indicators In Municipal Transportation Plans​​, Kelly Rodgers

PSU Transportation Seminars

As a social determinant of health, transportation significantly contributes to well-being through several pathways. Researchers and practitioners have called for health indicators as one way to integrate public health concerns into transportation decision-making. However, it is unclear how indicators are used and what their impact is on policy. This case study of five cities explored how health-related indicators are being used in municipal transportation plans, whether they are institutionalized into transportation agency decision-making processes, and what influence they have on administrative decision-making. In addition, this research also explored the conceptual use of indicators as it relates to social learning and …

Do Travel Costs Matter For Persons With Lower Incomes? Using Psychological And Social Equity Perspectives To Evaluate The Effects Of A Low-Income Transit Fare Program On Low-Income Riders, Katharine Mcmahon, Morgan Taylor, Liu-Qin Yang, Liming Wang, Aaron Golub, Greg Townley

TREC Final Reports

Objective: Access to transit can deliver a host of benefits to the riders and to the region. Previous research aiming to study these benefits has primarily relied on data collected from the opening of new routes or transit systems and focused on the general population. Little is known how low-income riders (LIR) react and benefit in response to when the cost barrier to access to transit is removed. With an intention to increase ridership while addressing the needs of transit-dependent riders in the region, TriMet (Portland, OR) expanded the Honored Citizens Program (HCP) in July 2018 to include low-income …

Towards Data And Solution-Focused Approaches For Homeless Populations On Publictransit, Anne Nordberg, Jaya Davis, Stephen Mattingly, Nithisha Gudipati, Ebonie Kinney, Hadiisha Butts

TREC Final Reports

People experiencing homelessness frequently rely on public transit systems and facilities as more than a mode of transportation to needed services, but also as safe shelters from weather and danger. This is a challenge for many transit agencies and impacts transit employees and passengers. Dallas and the surrounding counties have the largest homeless population in Texas, and they utilize the services of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) that serves 220,000 people per day in Dallas County and 12 surrounding counties. While there is much research focused on people experiencing homelessness, there are gaps in understanding how this population utilizes …

Pedestrian Behavior Study To Advance Pedestrian Safety In Smart Transportation Systems Using Innovative Lidar Sensors, Taylor Li, Sirisha M. Kothuri, Katherine L. Keeling, Xianfeng Terry Yang, Farzana R. Chowdhury

TREC Final Reports

Pedestrian safety is critical to improving walkability in cities. Although walking trips have increased in the last decade, pedestrian safety remains a top concern. In 2020, 6,516 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes, representing the most deaths since 1990 (NHTSA, 2020). Approximately 15% of these occurred at signalized intersections where a variety of modes converge, leading to the increased propensity of conflicts. Current signal timing and detection technologies are heavily biased towards vehicular traffic, often leading to higher delays and insufficient walk times for pedestrians, which could result in risky behaviors such as noncompliance. Current detection systems for pedestrians at …

Rural Gentrification And The Spillover Effect: Integrated Transportation, Housing, And Land Use Challenges And Strategies In Gateway Communities, Danya Rumore, Philip Stoker

TREC Final Reports

Small towns and cities near national parks, public lands, and other natural amenities throughout the West are experiencing rapid growth and increased visitation. These “gateway communities” comprise a significant portion of the rural West, constituting about 31% of all communities and more than 60% of those under 25,000 people. Our prior NITC-funded research shows that growth and increased tourism create a range of “big city challenges” for gateway communities, particularly a significant increase in housing prices, which pushes the local workforce to outlying areas and other rural communities. As a result, despite being small towns, many developed gateway communities have …

Transportation Safety Culture: Where We Are And What It Means, Tara Beth Goddard

PSU Transportation Seminars

Like any healthy professional community, the transportation safety community is not homogenous or without constructive conflict. The increased attention on systems thinking – most commonly known, if not necessarily well understood, under the “Vision Zero” approach – has sparked debate among engineers, planners, academics, public health professionals, advocates, and others about where our attention should be focused to reduce the epidemic of traffic violence. The built environment? Drivers? Engineers and planners? Car culture? What IS car culture? Dr. Goddard brings together her research conducted with colleagues on police crash reporting processes, NHTSA crash investigations, attitudes and effects of the language …

Network Effects Of Disruptive Traffic Events, Juan Medina, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu

TREC Final Reports

Current traffic management strategies are based on expected conditions caused by recurring congestion (e.g., by time of day, day of week), and can be very effective when provisions are also given for reasonable variations from such expectations. However, traffic variations due to non-recurrent events (e.g., crashes) can be much larger and difficult to predict, making also challenging efforts to identify, measure, and forecast their disruptive effects. This project explores a proactive approach to deploy a tool for managing non-recurrent congestion by identifying and quantifying the effects of disruptive traffic events at a microscopic level using a comprehensive set of data …

New Lidar System Pinpoints Pedestrian Behavior To Improve Eficiency And Safety At Intersections, Taylor Li, Sirisha M. Kothuri, Xianfeng Terry Yang

TREC Project Briefs

Pedestrian safety is critical to improving walkability in cities. To that end, NITC researchers have developed a system for collecting pedestrian behavior data using LiDAR sensors. Tested at two intersections in Texas and soon to be tested at another in Salt Lake City, Utah, the new software created by a multi-university research team is able to reliably observe pedestrian behavior and can help reduce conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles at signalized intersections. The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) is already working on implementing this new LiDAR system to improve data collection at intersections.

The Next Wave Of Abolishing Parking Mandates, Catie Gould, Jeannette Lee

PSU Transportation Seminars

The movement to eliminate parking mandates is having a big moment. This summer, both Oregon and California took statewide action to roll back minimum off-street parking requirements, relegalizing homes and businesses regardless of how many parking spots they have. We’ll take a look at why parking reform is so important, what to expect next in Oregon, and lessons from cities who have already gone all the way to delete this regulation from their zoning code.

Enabling Decision-Making In Battery Electric Bus Deployment Through Interactive Visualization, Xiaoyue Cathy Liu, Gabrielius Kudirka, Biao Kuang, Yirong Zhou, Jianlin Chen

TREC Final Reports

The transit industry is rapidly transitioning to battery-electric fleets because of the direct environmental and financial benefits they could offer, such as zero emissions, less noise, and lower maintenance costs. Yet the unique spatiotemporal characteristics associated with transit system charging requirements, as well as various objectives when prioritizing the fleet electrification, requires the system operators and/or decision-makers to fully understand the status of the transit system and energy/power system in order to make informed deployment decisions. A recently completed NITC project, No. 1222 titled An Electric Bus Deployment Framework for Improved Air Quality and Transit Operational Efficiency, developed a bi-objective …

Resurfacing A Trail In Oregon Using Volcanic Ash, Charles Riley, Ashton Greer

TREC Project Briefs

In the latest instance of taking research to practice, researchers at Oregon Tech have completed a pilot section of trail using a NITC-developed sustainable paving method. A quarter-mile section of the Klamath Geo Trail, just east and up the hill from the Oregon Tech Klamath Falls campus, has been successfully resurfaced using volcanic ash from Mount Mazama.

Applying A Mt. Mazama Volcanic Ash Treatment As A Trail Accessibility Improvement, Charles Riley, Ashton Greer, Matthew D. Sleep

TREC Final Reports

A procedure has been developed for implementing a topically applied Mt. Mazama volcanic ash trail surface amendment for improving trail firmness and stability. This project involved implementation of previously conducted Mt. Mazama volcanic research by applying a Mazama Ash and Portland Cement solution over a 0.2-mile section of the Geo Trail at the Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls campus. Testing was performed to verify ideal Ash-to-Cement-to-Water ratios. A procedure was developed and applied for batching and mixing the dry materials on-site, spreading and integrating the dry material with the existing trail surface, and wetting and compacting the surface. After …