Urban Studies Commons^™

Exploring The Determinants Of Vulnerable Road Users’ Crash Severity In State Roads, Álvaro Caviedes

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

Pedestrians and bicyclists are the most vulnerable road users and suffer the most severe consequences when crashes take place. An extensive literature is available for crash severity in terms of driver safety, but fewer studies have explored non-motorized users’ crash severity. Furthermore, most research efforts have examined pedestrian and bicyclist crash severity in urban areas. This study focuses on state roads (mostly outside major urban areas) and aims to identify contributing risk factors of fatal and severe crashes involving pedestrians and bicyclists in state roads. The results seem to suggest that besides improvements …

Development Of A Multi-Modal Travel Demand Module For The Regional Strategic Planning Model, Huajie Yang

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

Integrated land use and transportation models have evolved along a spectrum with simplistic sketch planning models on one end and sophisticated microsimulation models on the other. While each type of these models has its niche, they are largely unable to balance the flexibility and realism of microsimulation and the speed and interactiveness of simple models. The Regional Strategic Planning Model (RSPM) aims to fill this gap by taking a microsimulation approach but making other simplifications, to model first-order long-term outcomes of land use and transportation quickly. It takes into consideration the underlying uncertainties …

Exploring Bicycle Accessibility And Equity In Portland, Oregon, Jenny H. Liu

PSU Transportation Seminars

As urban areas across the country are investing in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure to promote environmentally sustainable transportation and to develop livable communities, many have pointed to improvements in environmental quality, economic development and public health as potential positive outcomes. While these outcomes of active transportation infrastructure are relatively well documented, it is also known that both transportation and environmental amenities are typically unevenly distributed in the urban context. Studies show that those who are the most socioeconomically disadvantaged (i.e. low income, people of color, etc.) are also those who disproportionately experience transportation disadvantages.

This study contributes to the existing …

How Commute Mode Choices Can Control Stress Levels, Liu-Qin Yang

TREC Project Briefs

This research integrates perspectives from transportation and psychology research by focusing on the relations between commuting stress, commuting mode choice, and consequences of such choice for commuters’ health, travel safety, and work performance. To fill the gaps in the transportation and psychology literatures, the project addresses two key research questions:

1) Under what circumstances workers experiencing commuting stress are more likely to commute via car vs. public transit vs. bicycle vs. on foot?

2) What are the different implications of choosing different commuting modes for commuters’ mental and physical health?

One Step At A Time: Counting Pedestrians Students Learn Pedestrian Observation And Data Collection In The Field, Jennifer Dill, Tara Beth Goddard

TREC Project Briefs

This guidebook provides a comprehensive set of class exercises suitable for students in courses related to travel behavior, traffic safety, urban planning and design, community health, or civil engineering. Exercises include activities developed through this project as well as an extensive set of educational materials drawn from online resources. The exercises developed as part of this project focus on pedestrians. They include elements of both traditional traffic counts and behavioral components, the latter of which are often lacking from current data collections efforts. By encouraging students to consider behavioral interactions of roadway users, these exercises can provide students with field …

Cascadia Connect: Car-Free Access To The Outdoors, Kara Boden, Brandon Crawford, Matt Gray, Tony Lamb, Maricelith Valencia, John Whitman

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

As outdoor recreation areas in Oregon become more popular, increased auto-related congestion results in strained resources, environmental degradation, and diminished visitors’ experiences. This project proposes policies, strategies, and a variety of approaches to help transportation agencies and land managers facilitate car-free access to outdoor recreation areas. The plan also proposes approaches to increase access to recreation areas for transit-dependent visitors and under-represented communities who face significant barriers to access today. The Background Report includes data; interview, survey and focus group themes; site visit findings; and personal travel anecdotes.

An Assessment Of The Sharing Economy And Its Policy Solutions Through The Lens Of Sustainability, Chloe An

Pomona Senior Theses

This senior thesis in environmental analysis explores the promise of sustainability of the sharing economy, its shortcomings from this positive potential, and possible policy solutions to help it reach its fullest, positive potential. At its core, the sharing economy enables shared access to goods and services that would otherwise sit in idle or underutilized capacity – popular platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and craigslist all fall within the sharing economy. By enabling affordable and convenient access to goods that would otherwise sit idle, the sharing economy encourages maximal use of a good that already exists rather than seeking out …

The Need For Enhanced Physical Infrastructure In The United States, Tanvi Gandham

CMC Senior Theses

An examination of necessary infrastructure improvements in the United States.

Empowering Portland's Youth To Choose Car-Free Mobility, Autumn Shafer, Jared Macary

TREC Project Briefs

Little is known from research about how to motivate youth to choose non-car mobility, especially specific Portland-area youth. Understanding the current attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of youth in relation to non-car mobility contributes to the sustainability of a long-term transportation system. Transportation system-related beliefs and behaviors of youth are likely to influence their willingness to access and support transportation services as adults. Today’s youth are tomorrow’s riders, bikers, walkers, voters, and transportation planners. Thus, it is important to develop age-appropriate messaging strategies and tactics that promote youth non-car mobility.

This project seeks to build on the sparse national and non-Portland …

Introduction To Data Science: Executive Summary, Liming Wang

TREC Project Briefs

This education project created the curriculum for a new course: Introduction to Data Science for Planners, Engineers, and Scientists. The course helps students and professionals tackle the challenges of processing high volumes of data.

How Do Stressed Workers Make Travel Mode Choices That Are Good For Their Health, Safety, And Productivity?, Liu-Qin Yang, Brad Wipfli, Lee Cyr, Kristina Marie Currans, Liming Wang

TREC Final Reports

It is well recognized in transportation and psychology research that commuting stress has consequences for commuters' travel safety, home environment, and work performance. Little research has addressed questions involving the possible interdependence between work stress, family stress, and commuting stress: Do workers having many demands from work and family life get more stressed out from a stressful commute? Or do stressed workers try to cope with work and non-work stress by choosing more relaxing travel modes?

This proposal integrates the perspectives from transportation, psychology, and health science by focusing on the relations between commuting stress, commuting mode choice, and consequences …

Improving Bicycle Crash Prediction For Urban Road Segments, Krista Nordback, Sirisha Kothuri, Wesley Marshall, Geoff Gibson, Nick Ferenchak

TREC Final Reports

The 2010 Highway Safety Manual (HSM) provides methods for predicting the number of motor vehicle crashes on various roadway facilities. However, it includes only a rudimentary method for predicting the number of bicycle-related crashes. Despite research demonstrating that bicycle volume is an important factor in estimating number of bicycle crashes, the method does not include the volume of bicyclists using the roadway. To remedy this, this project will investigate the potential of various simplified methods to include bicycle volumes in future versions of the HSM. By studying locations where bicycle traffic volumes, motor vehicle traffic volumes, bicycle collisions, and roadway …

Breaking Barriers To Bike Share: Insights From Bike Share Users, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill, John Macarthur, Joseph Broach

TREC Final Reports

This report seeks to provide more information about lower-income people and people of color who engage in bike share, including why they choose to become members, how they use the system, and how they benefit. The report looks at current and past bike share members, along with those who were involved in some type of equity-based outreach program. The findings draw from a survey intended to reach lower-income and/or people of color known to have engaged in bike share, either through membership or participating in events such as organized rides, in the same three cities studied in the resident report …

New Probe Data Sources To Measure Cycling Behavior And Safety, Christopher Cherry

PSU Transportation Seminars

Emerging probe data sources from smartphones on on-board devices are able to measure behavior of cyclists with very high resolution. From this, for the first time, we are able to measure relatively precise behavior that allows new insights into exposure, route choice, safety behavior, or technology choice. Probe data, merged with other data sources, can begin to develop a more complete picture of cyclists on-road behavior.

This presentation will offer examples of analyses done to investigate cyclists behavior using app-based and on-board GPS data in the context of individual cyclists behavior (i.e., app users) and behavior of bikeshare users (i.e., …

Assessing The Impact Of Land Use And Travel On Carbon Dioxide Emissions In Portland, Oregon, Zakari Mumuni

Dissertations and Theses

The negative consequences of sprawling metropolitan regions have attracted attention in both academia and in practice regarding how to better design settlements and alter travel behavior in a quest to curtail vehicle emissions. Studies that have attempted to understand the nexus between land use, travel and vehicle emissions have not been able to address the issue of self-selection in a satisfactory manner. Self-selection occurs when households choose their residential location based, in part, on expected travel behavior. This non-random experience makes the use of traditional regression frameworks that strongly rely on random sampling, unsuitable. This replication study's purpose was to …

"Naturally Occurring" Or "Until Market Speculation Starts": Investigating The Precarity Of Affordable Rental Housing And The Potential For Displacement Along Planned Transit Lines, Lisa K. Bates

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

New transit infrastructure is a double-edged sword for low-income renters: one the one hand, increased mobility supports access to jobs and critical services; but if transit-oriented development fails to include and preserve affordable housing, they may be pushed out by rising rents. The question of whether public investments spur gentrification and displacement have created intense controversy around planned transit extensions in our region. My research on precarious rental housing illuminates the specific mechanisms of housing displacement and challenges for housing affordability in the single-family/duplex and the large multifamily rental market. The loss of low-cost housing is occurring even without new …

Evaluation Of Roadway Reallocation Projects, Miguel Figliozzi

TREC Project Briefs

This NITC study offers a new methodology for evaluating the before-and-after effects of roadway space reallocation projects.

Evaluation Of Roadway Reallocation Projects: Analysis Of Before-And-After Travel Speeds And Congestion Utilizing High-Resolution Bus Transit Data, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Travis B. Glick

TREC Final Reports

The traditional process of identifying corridors for road diet improvements involves selecting potential corridors (mostly based on identifying fourlane roads) and conducting a traffic impact analysis of proposed changes on a selected roadway before implementing changes. The evaluation of roadway reallocation projects should include the analysis of traffic volumes, level of service, speeds, queue lengths and bus operations. There are tools and equipment to evaluate effectively traffic volumes and level of service changes in before-and-after studies. However, the detailed evaluation of speed and queue length distributions along a segment are significantly more cumbersome. In addition, the exhaustive evaluation of bus …

Using The Planning Process To Mitigate Climate Change, Keith Bartholomew

TREC Project Briefs

This research evaluates how Oregon’s SB 1059 and California’s SB 375 have integrated climate change mitigation strategies into local planning processes, and seeks to understand how transportation planning can help slow climate change.

Building Planner Commitment: Are California’S Sb 375 And Oregon’S Sb 1059 Models For Climate-Change Mitigation?, Keith Bartholomew, David Proffitt

TREC Final Reports

California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act (SB 375) and the Oregon Sustainable Transportation Initiative (SB 1059) have made them the first states in the nation to try and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using the transportation-planning process. Evaluating how these pioneering laws have changed local planning processes – as well as plans themselves – in each state provides insight into the laws’ effectiveness at changing development patterns in a way that reduces GHG emissions, without waiting decades to see the effects in the built environment. Both states’ laws require metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and the municipalities that comprise them …

Webinar: Transportation Benefits Of Parking Cash-Out, Pre-Tax Commuter Benefits, And Parking Surtaxes, Allen Greenberg, James Choe, Sonika Sethi, Colleen Stoll

TREC Webinar Series

The vast majority of employers provide their employees free parking at work, which encourages employees to drive alone. Multiple strategies exist to level the playing field between travel modes and allow employees to select the travel option most beneficial to them without suffering a financial penalty. The U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration sponsored a study to understand the effect parking cash out, pre-tax commuter benefits, and parking surtaxes can have on congestion, emissions, and other driving-related externalities. The study is part of the Administration’s ongoing efforts to increase awareness of solutions to address the transportation issues affecting communities …

Municipal Co-Distribution Of Goods – Business Models, Stakeholders And Driving Forces For Change, Olof Moen

PSU Transportation Seminars

The presentation provides background information and illustrates driving forces of the development of municipal co-distribution of goods in Sweden. The business model is “somewhat unique” to Sweden, given the country’s comprehensive welfare sector through which local governments are often the main transport buyers in smaller municipalities without industries or commerce. In this respect, Sweden has been a pioneer in streamlining public administration at all levels replacing manual work procedures and paperwork with the use of computers and digital information, with an overall aim to allow for spending on social and political reform policies. The main business model used in municipal …

Advisory Bike Lanes In North America, Michael Williams

PSU Transportation Seminars

Despite being used successfully for decades in Europe, Advisory Bike Lanes are an emerging facility type in North America and can be an effective tool for communities wishing to provide bicycle lanes on streets that are otherwise too narrow to accommodate them. This talk will introduce the concept and operation of advisory bike lanes and look at some lessons learned from the early installations of this facility in the U.S. and Canada.

Walking While Black: Racial Bias At The Crosswalk, Kimberly Barsamian Kahn

TREC Project Briefs

This project, led by Kimberly Kahn of Portland State University, explores social identity factors (race and gender) that influence drivers’ behavior in interactions with pedestrians at crosswalks. One dangerous potential point of conflict for pedestrians within the transportation system is interactions with drivers at crosswalks. In 2010, there was one crash-related pedestrian death every two hours and an injury every eight minutes, and racial minorities are disproportionately represented in these pedestrian fatalities. In light of this disparity, this project examines whether racial discrimination occurs at crosswalks, which may lead to disparate crossing experiences and disproportionate safety outcomes.

Racial Bias In Drivers' Yielding Behavior At Crosswalks: Understanding The Effect, Kimberly Barsamian Kahn, Jean M. Mcmahon, Tara Goddard, Arlie Adkins

TREC Final Reports

This project explores social identity factors (race and gender) that influence drivers’ behavior in interactions with pedestrians at crosswalks. One dangerous potential point of conflict for pedestrians within the transportation system is interactions with drivers at crosswalks (NHTSA, 2009). In 2010, there was one crash-related pedestrian death every two hours and an injury every eight minutes, and racial minorities are disproportionately represented in these pedestrian fatalities (CDC, 2013). In light of this disparity, this project examines whether racial discrimination occurs at crosswalks, which may lead to disparate crossing experiences and disproportionate safety outcomes. Racial minorities experience racial discrimination across various …

Does Compact Development Increase Or Reduce Traffic Congestion?, Reid Ewing, Guang Tian, Torrey Lyons

TREC Final Reports

From years of research, we know that compact development that is dense, diverse, well-designed, etc. produces fewer vehicle miles traveled (VMT) than sprawling development. But compact development also concentrates origins and destinations. No one has yet determined, using credible urban form metrics and credible congestion data, the net effect of these countervailing forces on area-wide congestion. Using compactness/sprawl metrics developed for the National Institutes of Health, and congestion data from the Texas Transportation Institute’s (TTI’s) Urban Mobility Scorecard Annual Report database, this study seeks to determine which opposing point of view of sprawl and congestion is correct. It does so …

Does Compact Development Increase Or Reduce Congestion?, Reid Ewing

TREC Project Briefs

The net effects of sprawl or compact development on area-wide traffic congestion have been a subject of debate among transportation researchers.

This project aims to settle the debate using:

• Congestion data from the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Scorecard database;
• Compactness/sprawl metrics developed at the University of Utah.

Compact development may help at the margin, but the greatest reduction in congestion appears to be achieved through expansion of surface streets and higher highway user fees.

The Effects Of Demand-Responsive Parking On Transit Usage And Congestion: Evidence From Sfpark, Nicole S. Ngo, Chandra Kiran Krishnamurth

TREC Final Reports

Parking is a serious issue in many urban areas, especially those experiencing rapid population growth. To address this problem, some cities have implemented demand-responsive pricing programs, where parking prices vary depending on the occupancy rate in a previous period. Yet, few empirical studies have rigorously evaluated these programs, though they have the potential to improve turnover and much needed parking availability in growing cities with limited infrastructure. In this study, we investigate the impacts of SFpark, a demand-responsive pricing parking program in San Francisco that began in 2011. We focus on metered, on-street parking and exploit the timing of SFpark …

Travel To Food: Transportation Barriers For The Food Insecure In Tampa Bay, Kevin Salzer, Ann Joslin

TREC Final Reports

In partnership with the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida (USF), the Transportation Innovation Group informed practical transportation solutions aimed at improved food access in Tampa Bay (Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties). The food pantry/bank sites that are part of Tampa Bay Network to End Hunger (TBNTEH) helped to gather data through a survey and interviews of food-related organizational leadership, staff and volunteers from each site to gain insight into how clients currently access emergency food sites (qualitative). This information was supplemented with a GIS analysis of transit accessibility for the food insecure in …

Transportation Access For The Food Insecure, Ann Joslin

TREC Project Briefs

A NITC small starts project explores transportation barriers for Tampa Bay’s food insecure population, and recommends strategies to help.