Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Cyclist Path Choices Through Shared Space Intersections In England, Allison Boyce Duncan

Dissertations and Theses

In the last several years, there has been growing worldwide interest in making streets safer for all users--pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. One approach, shared space, is a traffic calming technique as well as urban design concept. This technique strives to fully integrate the roadway into the urban fabric by removing elements such as lane markings, curbs, and traffic signs. By removing these elements and creating a more plaza-like space, these sites become ambiguous and no user group as priority. The technique is relatively new, and the majority of existing research concerns pedestrians only. This mixed methods research focused on six …

Edged Out: Location Efficient Housing And Low Income Households In The Portland Region, Andrée Tremoulet, Ryan Dann

PSU Transportation Seminars

Transportation costs are typically a household’s second largest expense after housing. Low income households are especially burdened by transportation costs, with low income households spending up to two times as much of their income on transportation than higher income households (Litman, 2013).

Thus, access to location efficient housing is especially important to low income households, including those who use a housing voucher to help pay for housing costs.

This seminar presents the results of a two-year project supported by the Portland region's four public housing authorities to design and test tools to help people with housing vouchers find location efficient …

The Economic Impact Of Oregon City’S County Seat Status, Mike Paruszkiewicz, Jeff Renfro, Peter Hulseman, Emma Willingham

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

Impact analysis discussing the economic role of county presence in Oregon City.

Beyond The Fringe, Carl Abbott

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Reviews the book: Lincoln Bramwell. Wilderburbs: Communities on Nature’s Edge. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014. Andrew Needham. Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Differential Health And Social Needs Of Older Adults Waitlisted For Public Housing Or Housing Choice Vouchers, Paula C. Carder, Gretchen Luhr, Jacklyn Nicole Kohon

Institute on Aging Publications

Affordable housing is an important form of income security for low-income older persons. This article describes characteristics of older persons waitlisted for either public housing or a housing choice voucher (HCV) (previously Section 8) in Portland, Oregon. 358 persons (32% response rate) completed a mailed survey with questions about demographics, health and housing status, food insecurity, and preference for housing with services. Findings indicate that many waitlisted older persons experienced homelessness or housing instability, poor health, high hospital use, and food insecurity. Public housing applicants were significantly more likely to report lower incomes, homelessness, and food insecurity than HCV applicants. …

Collaboration In An Era Of Change: New Forms Of Community Problem-Solving, Judith A. Ramaley

Public Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

Campuses are developing new ways to respond to complex social, cultural, economic and environmental problems by adapting their educational approaches and their scholarship to address a changing world order. At the same time, government agencies, nonprofit organizations and businesses are embracing collaborative approaches to community problem-solving. These collaborative approaches, on and off campus, are creating new forms of university-community engagement that will require us to rethink the nature of the societal roles we play and how we generate knowledge, create an inspiring educational environment, and assist our students in acquiring the knowledge and skills they will need to work effectively …

Parking Infrastructure: A Constraint On Or Opportunity For Urban Redevelopment?, Mikhail Chester

PSU Transportation Seminars

Many cities have adopted minimum parking requirements, but we have relatively poor information about how parking infrastructure has grown.

In this research, using building and roadway growth models, we estimate how parking has grown in Los Angeles County from 1900 to 2010, and how parking infrastructure evolves, affects urban form, and relates to changes in automobile travel.

We find that since 1975, the ratio of residential offstreet parking spaces to automobiles in Los Angeles County is close to 1.0 and the greatest density of parking spaces is in the urban core. Most new growth in parking occurs outside of the …

Travel Mode Choice Framework Incorporating Realistic Bike And Walk Routes, Joseph Broach

Dissertations and Theses

For a number of reasons--congestion, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, demographic shifts, and community livability to name a few--the importance of walking and bicycling as transportation options will only continue to increase. Currently, policy interest and infrastructure funding for nonmotorized modes far outstrip our ability to model bike and walk travel. To ensure scarce resources are used most effectively, accurate models sensitive to key policy variables are needed to support long-range planning and project evaluation, and to continue adding to our growing understanding of key factors driving walk and bike behavior. This research attempts to synthesize and advance …

Star Academics: Do They Garner Increasing Returns?, James Jeffrey Kline

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the criteria which help academics receive National Institute of Health funds (NIH). The study covers 3,092 NIH recipients and non-recipients in the same department or institute at twenty-four universities. The universities are drawn from those below the top twenty in terms of receipt of NIH funds. With regards to performance, non- recipients have lower performance than recipients. A key determinant of the receipt of NIH funds is individual performance, as measured by the number of articles published and average citations per article in the two years immediately prior to the grant application. Professors receive more NIH money …

Brookings Annexation Project, Portland State University. Hatfield School Of Government. Center For Public Service, Kent S. Robinson, Robert Winthrop, Dave Rouse, Paul Manson, Chris Mckee, Priscilla Wagner

Center for Public Service Publications and Reports

Center for Public Service (CPS) helped the City of Brookings respond to public concerns and opposition to suggestions for a City annexation of the adjacent community of Harbor. The City and CPS agreed to a consulting study in which CPS assessed the public service situation in the City and Harbor area, and then modeled and analyzed two annexation scenarios. Development of the annexation scenarios was especially complex. Annexation law and procedures, urban renewal requirements and assessments, three types of special districts, decaying water and sanitary infrastructure, state revenue shared funds, and unique transient tax and tourism fund use all combined …

Consistent Estimation Of Route Choice Models For Dynamic Transit Assignment, Jeff Hood

PSU Transportation Seminars

Dynamic transit assignment models have the potential to improve local transportation agencies’ capability to forecast the demand for public transit facilities under conditions of limited capacity or varying reliability. In order to be useful in practice, the simulated route choices of passengers in these models need to reflect the behavior of actual residents observed in local travel surveys. Most analysis methods of revealed route choice preferences developed to date have either (1) not been proven to provide consistent estimates or (2) required an untenable computation time for practical applications. Furthermore, no model of transit route choice has accounted for variability …

Webinar: Development Of A Pedestrian Demand Estimation Tool, Kelly Clifton

TREC Webinar Series

Why model pedestrians?

A new predictive tool for estimating pedestrian demand has potential applications for improving walkability. By forecasting the number, location and characteristics of walking trips, this tool allows for policy-sensitive mode shifts away from automobile travel.

There is growing support to improve the quality of the walking environment and make investments to promote pedestrian travel. Despite this interest and need, current forecasting tools, particularly regional travel demand models, often fall short. To address this gap, Oregon Metro and NITC researcher Kelly Clifton worked together to develop this pedestrian demand estimation tool which can allow planners to allocate infrastructure …

A Century Of Influence: Report Of The Centennial Research Committee, City Club Of Portland (Portland, Or.)

City Club of Portland

No abstract provided.

An Analysis Of Cyclist Path Choices Through Shared Space Intersections In England, Allison Boyce Duncan

PSU Transportation Seminars

Shared space is a traffic calming technique as well as urban design concept. Also known as ‘Naked Streets’, this technique strives to fully integrate the roadway into the urban fabric by removing elements such as lane markings, curbs, and traffic signs. By removing these elements and creating a more plaza-like space, these spaces become ambiguous and no user group has priority. The technique is relatively new, and the majority of existing research concerns pedestrians only.

This study focused on intersections in England with the goal of understanding how bicycle riders perceive and travel through shared space intersections.

Using video observations, …

Towards Effective Design Treatment For Right Turns At Intersections With Bicycle Traffic, David Hurwitz, Christopher Monsere

PSU Transportation Seminars

The overall goal of this research was to quantify the safety performance of alternative traffic control strategies to mitigate right-turning-vehicle/bicycle collisions, often called "right-hook" crashes, at signalized intersections in Oregon.

A two stage experiment was developed in the OSU high-fidelity driving simulator to investigate the causal factors of right-hook crashes at signalized intersections with a striped bike lane and no right-turn lane, and to then identify and evaluate alternative design treatments that could mitigate the occurrence of right-hook crashes.

Experiment 1 investigated motorist and environmental related causal factors of right-hook crashes, using three different motorist performance measures: (1) visual attention, …

Creating Protected Areas On Public Lands: Is There Room For Additional Conservation?, Rodrigo A. Arriagada, Cristian M. Echeverria, Danisa E. Moya

Forest Collaborative Research

Most evaluations of the effectiveness of PAs have relied on indirect estimates based on comparisons between protected and unprotected areas. Such methods can be biased when protection is not randomly assigned. We add to the growing literature on the impact of PAs by answering the following research questions: What is the impact of Chilean PAs on deforestation which occurred between 1986 and 2011? How do estimates of the impact of PAs vary when using only public land as control units? We show that the characteristics of the areas in which protected and unprotected lands are located differ significantly. To satisfactorily …

The Case For Age-Friendly Communities, Margaret Neal, Alan Kenneth Delatorre

Institute on Aging Publications

The report was funded by Grantmakers In Aging, an organization dedicated to promoting and strengthening grantmaking for an aging society. The movement toward age-friendly communities is growing, with the key impetus being population aging. Beyond what individuals themselves can do to age optimally, the movement to create communities that are age friendly focuses on how the economic, physical, and social environments can be improved to address not only the needs but also maximize the assets of an aging population, for the benefit of all.

Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership: An Economic Impact Analysis, Emma Willingham, Mike Paruszkiewicz

Northwest Economic Research Center Publications and Reports

The Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), founded in 1988, is a network of non-profit agencies staffed by industry professionals and consultants. Historically, MEP has sought to increase the competitiveness of small to mid-size enterprises (which as a group comprise 99% of all U.S. manufacturing firms) by providing expert guidance and access to resources. In recent years, the severe economic recession sparked increased interest in the strength of the manufacturing sector, due to its longtime status as one of the major drivers of the domestic economy. Oregon Manufacturing Extension Partnership (OMEP), the Oregon branch of MEP, works to provide data-driven analysis …

In Defense Of Culturally-Specific Organizations: Understanding The Rationale And The Evidence, Ann Curry-Stevens, Jennifer Sita Muthanna

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

Racial disparities abound in human services, with communities of color facing grave impediments to positive progress. Mainstream institutions move painstakingly slowly on reforms—movement too slow to offer this generation prospects for real hope in equity. This paper builds the rationale for expanding funding for culturally-specific organizations, detailing the ways that the literature and the tacit knowledge of culturally-specific organizations improve outcomes for clients and communities of color. The article identifies the service benefits in terms of client outcomes, accountability practices, community benefits, cultural affirmation and inclusion, building community and political capital, and lessening investments in white-centric services. We also identify …

Cycling By Choice Or Necessity? Exploring The Gender Gap In Bicycling In Oregon, Patrick Allen Singleton

PSU Transportation Seminars

In Oregon, as elsewhere in the US, a greater percentage of men bicycle than women. This study illuminates the gender gap in bicycling by exploring differences in bicycling among women and men in Oregon. A one-day statewide travel survey of over 30,000 adults was examined. Comparisons between individual, household, and trip and activity characteristics for people grouped by gender (women vs. men) and bicycling (made a bicycle trip or normally commuted by bicycle vs. did not bicycle) were assessed using chi-squared tests of independence. Many significant differences were found. In particular, women living alone, not working, without a high-school degree, …

Evaluation Of An Electric Bike Pilot Project At Three Employment Campuses In Portland, Oregon, Nicholas Kobel

PSU Transportation Seminars

Electric bicycles are growing more popular every year, but little research yet exists on how they might play a role in our transportation systems. Much of the literature on biking for transportation focuses on the standard bicycle and infrastructure to support it, less so on the vehicle itself. This project evaluates an electric bicycle program at three Kaiser Permanente campuses in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area and examines participants' impressions of e-bikes.

Results support the hypothesis that e-bikes allow for a broader participation in cycling and for existing cyclists to go to more places.

Utilizing High Resolution Bus Gps Data To Visualize And Identify Congestion Hot-Spots In Urban Arterials, Nicholas B. Stoll

PSU Transportation Seminars

The research uses high resolution bus data to examine sources of delay on urban arterials. A set of tools were created to help visualize trends in bus behavior and movement, which allowed for larger traffic trends to be visualized along urban corridors and urban streets. By using buses as probes and examining aggregated bus behavior, contoured speed plots were used to understand the behavior of roadways outside the zone of influence of bus stops. These speed plots can be utilized to discover trends and travel patterns with only a few days’ worth of data. Congestion and speed variation can be …

Assessing Travel Plans For Residential Developments, Geoff Rose

PSU Transportation Seminars

A ‘travel plan’ is a travel demand management strategy that contains a package of site-specific measures designed to manage car use and encourage the use of more sustainable transport modes. Much of the existing literature on travel plans focuses on their application in workplaces and schools. Travel plans can be required for new residential developments as part of the land use planning and approvals process. However, there is limited understanding of the extent to which they have influenced travel behaviour. This presentation focuses on the assessment of travel plans developed for new residential apartment developments in Melbourne, Australia. Consideration is …

Managing User Delay With A Focus On Pedestrian Operations, Andrew Kading

PSU Transportation Seminars

Across the U.S, walking trips are increasing. However, pedestrians still face significantly higher delays than motor vehicles at signalized intersections due to traditional signal timing practices of prioritizing vehicular movements. This study explores pedestrian delay reduction methods via development of a pedestrian priority algorithm that selects an operational plan favorable to pedestrian service, provided a user defined volume threshold has been met for the major street. This algorithm, along with several operational scenarios, were analyzed with VISSIM using Software-In-The-Loop (SITL) simulation to determine the impact these strategies have on user delays. One of the operational scenarios examined was that of …

The Importance Of Housing, Accessibility, And Transport Characteristic Ratings On Stated Neighborhood Preference, Kristina Marie Currans

PSU Transportation Seminars

Travel demand models commonly lack the ability to understand how changing residential preferences influence future housing, land use, and transportation policies. As communities struggle to address social challenges related to increased economic uncertainty, transportation and land use planning have become increasingly centered on assumptions concerning the market for residential environments and travel choices. In response, an added importance has been placed on the development of toolkits capable of providing robust and flexible models to aid in understanding how differing assumptions contribute to a set of planning scenarios and how future residential location decisions may be made.

In this study, we …

An Activity-Related Land Use Mix Construct And Its Connection To Pedestrian Travel, Steven R. Gehrke

PSU Transportation Seminars

Land use mix is a central smart growth principle connected to active transportation. This presentation describes the indicators of local land use mixing and their association with pedestrian travel in Oregon’s Willamette River Valley. It argues that land use mix is a multidimensional construct reflected by the complementarity, composition, and configuration of land use types, which is positively linked to walk mode choice and home-based trip frequency. Findings from this study underline the conceptual and empirical benefit of analyzing this transportation-land use interaction with a landscape pattern measure of activity-related composition and spatial configuration.

The presentation for this seminar was …

In Need Of A Long Welcome: Supporting The Integration Of Newcomers To Portland, Ann Curry-Stevens, Anne Sinkey

Center to Advance Racial Equity Publications and Reports

Portland’s newcomer communities bring considerable assets to the region. Their legacy is one of potential untapped, as they face significant exclusion from economic and civic life, and an environment that is full of challenges without sufficient supports to help them navigate forwards into the fabric of Portland. This report, prepared in partnership with the New Portlander’s Policy Council, surfaces the history of newcomer conditions in the region, including a policy history, alongside a literature review on best practices for newcomer integration, new quantitative data on the patterns of newcomer experiences, a chapter on myths and myth-busting, and insights into five …

Periodic Atlas Of The Of The Metroscape: Warming Up The City - Mapping The Hottest (Literally) Neighborhoods Of Portland, Vivek Shandas, Jackson Voelkel

Metroscape

Vivek Shandas and Jackson Voelkel show us how urban head varies by characteristics of a neighborhood's built and natural environment. The Atlas reminds us to be aware of the potential impact on those most likely to suffer ill effects from the heat.

Perceptions Regarding Public Safety In Portland’S King Neighborhood, Kris R. Henning, Greg Stewart

Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute Research Briefs

The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) is partnering with Portland State University (PSU) and neighborhood groups to develop new strategies for improving police-community relations and reducing crime. Our most recent initiative seeks to provide residents with greater voice in where PPB officers work in their neighborhood and what steps the City takes there to address public safety concerns.

The King neighborhood in Northeast Portland was chosen as the starting point for this work following a recent gang related shooting at King School Park. Officers from North Precinct had already begun outreach to the community and they wanted additional input from the …

6 Reasons To Relax About Portland's Recent Sell-Offs, Thomas Kerr

Metroscape

Are you feeling nostalgic for Oregon-born companies like Dave's Killer Bread, Little Big Burger, and Precision Castparts? Thomas Kerr asserts that we need not fear the recent rash of acquisitions. New owners often bring fresh ideas and capital to the table while maintaining the characteristics we've come to love about our locally owned companies.