Urban Studies Commons^™

Design And Implementation Of Pedestrian And Bicycle-Specific Data Collection Methods In Oregon, Miguel Figliozzi, Christopher Monsere, Krista Nordback, Pamela Johnson, Bryan Philip Blanc

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although there is a growing need to access accurate and reliable pedestrian and bicycle data, there is no statewide system to collect data or plan future data collection efforts in the state of Oregon. To address these issues this research conducted a comprehensive review of pedestrian and bicycle data collection methods and counting technologies. Oregon data sources were also compiled and AADT estimation techniques were reviewed and applied to Oregon data. A pilot study was conducted to test bicycle and pedestrian counting methods at signalized intersections with 2070 controllers. The report also provides a summary of recommendations regarding factoring methods …

Street Portals: Urban User Interface 'Test Bed' Prototype For Bike Shares, Jason Germany, Philip Speranza

TREC Final Reports

The objective of this research project is to develop a user interface “test bed” to measure the role of touchscreen kiosks with community connectivity. This interface test bed will apply the knowledge of interface design to the domain of public transit kiosks, with a particular focus on bike share stations. The value of this research is the ability to generate user feedback between community members using urban experiences. Safety, effectiveness and community connectivity of public transit is enhanced with this information interface.

This report explains the test bed kiosk’s design, physical build, and hardware and software testing. User interaction studies …

The Development Of Low-/No-Emission Electric Vehicle Infrastructure In The Portland Metro Region: A Roadmap, John Macarthur, Peter Murchie, George Beard

TREC Final Reports

The shift from combustion engines to low- and no-emission electric vehicles is underway and gaining momentum. During the last year, Oregon has become an active player in the electric vehicle arena, with a number of promising relationships and activities in the early stages of formalization. With additional thought, effort and strategy Oregon can seize the opportunity to become the national leader in the adoption and incorporation of new vehicle platforms and mobility strategies into the fabric of urban life and the built environment. Oregon is currently actively engaged in relationships with international automotive companies and local businesses and utilities interested …

How Clean Is The Air On Bicycle Routes?, Miguel Figliozzi, James F. Pankow

TREC Project Briefs

A NITC research project evaluates cyclists’ exposure to air pollution along distinct types of bicycle facilities.

Transit Planning Practice In The Age Of Transit-Oriented Development, Ian Carlton

PSU Transportation Seminars

Transit serves as backbone infrastructure for many regional and local visions for sustainable urban development. Also, many modern policies predicate transit funding on the potential for transit-oriented development (TOD) near proposed infrastructure investments. However, little research has examined how TOD considerations have informed transit planning. This presentation discusses the results of recent dissertation research that fills this gap. Through multiple transit project case studies and interviews with nearly 100 transit planning professionals, this research categorized how transit projects across 19 U.S. regions were designed to foster TOD and how transit planning professionals identified TOD opportunities as projects were planned. During …

An Introduction To The Nacto Urban Street Design: Changing The Dna Of City Streets, Peter Koonce

PSU Transportation Seminars

In this seminar Peter will summarize his contributions to the NACTO Urban Street Design Guide, a guidebook focused on a paradigm shift in transportation, pulling away from the traditional bias toward highway designs that do not always meet the complex needs of streets in cities.

Federal Transit Administration's Impact On Public Transportation In The United States, Amy Changchien

PSU Transportation Seminars

The Federal Transit Administration invests in building the capacity and improving the quality of public transportation throughout the United States of America. Under FTA's leadership, public rail, bus, trolley, ferry, and other transit services have reached greater levels of safety, reliability, availability, and accessibility. Come hear the highlights of FTA's impacts and participate in an interactive question/answer session and discussion on career options in public transportation.

More Urban Form, Fewer Auto Trips, Kelly J. Clifton

TREC Project Briefs

Trip generation refers to the number of vehicle trips that are predicted to originate in a given zone. The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) publishes standard trip generation rates for various land use types, but these rates are primarily measured in low-density suburban areas. There is national interest in building data that expands upon the existing ITE trip generation rates to include sites located in a multi-modal context.

In areas that have a more compact urban form, better access to transit and a greater mix of land uses, fewer vehicle trips may be generated there than ITE rates indicate. However, …

Active Travelers, Competitive Consumers, Kelly J. Clifton, Christopher Devlin Muhs, Sara Morrissey, Tomás Morrissey, Kristina Marie Currans, Chloe Ritter

TREC Project Briefs

No abstract provided.

An Operator Survey: Making Bus Travel Safer, James G. Strathman, Sung Moon Kwon

TREC Project Briefs

No abstract provided.

Multiday Gps Travel Behavior Data For Travel Analysis: The Effect Of Day-To-Day Travel Time Variability On Auto Travel Choices, Jennifer Dill, Joseph Broach, Kate Deutsch-Burgne, Yanzhi Xu, Randall Guensler, David Levinson, Wenyun Tang

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project explored the potential of archived multi-day GPS data to expand the understanding of travel-time reliability. While reliability is often observed and considered at the system or segment level, travel-time uncertainty is also experienced at the household and trip level. Any move toward incorporating reliability into regional travel models will necessitate a re-examination of travel-time variation at more disaggregate levels. The analysis uses multiday vehicle-based GPS data analyzed within the Transportation Secure Data Center (TSDC). There were three major goals for the research. The first goal was to consider the ways in which multiday GPS data could be translated …

Exploring The Effects Of Adaptive Traffic Systems, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Christopher M. Monsere

TREC Project Briefs

Researchers conduct an in-depth analysis of traffic performance and associated vehicular emissions, before and after the installation of a SCATS unit.

How Livable Is Your Transit System?, Marc Schlossberg

TREC Project Briefs

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has identified some “livability principles” which include healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods and safe, reliable and economical transportation choices. Transit agencies and local governments routinely use metrics to evaluate the performance of transit systems, but a uniform standard of transit data collection does not exist outside of the reporting requirements of the National Transit Database (NTD). Because of the types of data collected for the NTD, the focus of performance measurements is often on ridership and financial performance, leaving aside the question of livability.

In an OTREC-sponsored project, principal investigator Marc Schlossberg …

Cracking Susceptibility Of Concrete Made With Recycled Concrete Aggregate, O. Burkan Isgor, Jason Ideker, Tengfei Fu, Matthew P. Adams

TREC Final Reports

As high-quality, local, natural aggregate resources continue to become less available, and the cost of landfilling waste material rises, the need for alternative aggregates and recycling of waste material will increase. Using RCA in fresh concrete is one way to address both of these issues. However, there has long been a concern that RCA may negatively affect the properties of new concrete in which it is included. The results of the present investigation, however, indicate that the use of RCA in new concrete may not produce higher levels of free drying shrinkage as previously believed. Actually, these results show that …

From Transit Stop To Urbanity Node: Field Audit For Measuring Livability At The Transit Stop, Deni Ruggeri

TREC Final Reports

This research proposal addresses issues of livability at the transit stop. American transit systems have historically been “shoehorned” into existing street networks designed predominantly for cars and trucks. While much research exists on livability and walkability in the context of urban and suburban streets and blocks, bus stops are greatly understudied. This research focused on bus stops and aimed at analyzing their performance in terms of livability, with particular emphasis on perceptions. Our definition of livability was expanded to include considerations of safety and maintenance, cleanliness, imageability and vitality, which have been shown to affect people’s perceptions of livability and …

2012 Portland Metropolitan Region Transportation System Performance Report, Robert L. Bertini, Dean George, Matthew Downey

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our transportation system is a key ingredient in the economy, quality of life and urban fabric of the Portland metropolitan area. It has been stated in the past that it is not possible to manage our transportation system tomorrow unless we understand how it is performing today. In this spirit, Portland State University has been working with regional and statewide partners to develop new capabilities to measure, monitor and track the performance of the transportation system in real time and using archived data sources. We believe that it is possible to leverage these disparate data sources toward providing better transportation …

Durability Assessment Of Recycled Concrete Aggregates For Use In New Concrete: Phase I - Revised, Jason H. Ideker, Matthew P. Adams, Jennifer Tanner, Angela Jones

TREC Final Reports

The primary goal of this research project was to investigate the long-term durability of concrete incorporating recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) through accelerated laboratory testing. Overall it was found that modifications to standard aggregate testing and characterization standards were necessary for testing RCA. This included modifications to standard tests including ASTM C 128, C 305 and C 1260. It was found that the potential for alkalisilica reactivity did exist for new concrete containing RCA. The characteristics of the RCA also had a profound effect on ASR related expansion. RCA with a higher content of reactive coarse or fine aggregate (compared to …

Modeling Of Dc Link Capacitor Current Ripple For Electric Vehicle Traction Converter, Lei Jin, Julia Zhang

TREC Final Reports

Contemporary Full Hybrid Electric Vehicle/Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle/Battery Electric Vehicle (FHEV/PHEV/BEV) products use one or more DC/AC power converters, also known as traction inverters, to convert the DC voltage/current provided by the traction battery to the AC voltage/current to drive the traction motor(s). Large and bulky DC link capacitors are used at the input of the traction inverter to provide a smooth DC input voltage. Those DC link capacitors, occupying almost 50% of the space in the whole package, can contribute to more than 20% of the total cost of the traction inverter. They are generally over designed to assure …

Improving The Representation Of The Pedestrian Environment In Travel Demand Models, Phase I, Kelly J. Clifton, Patrick Allen Singleton, Christopher Devlin Muhs, Robert J. Schneider, Peter Lagerwey

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is growing support for improvements to the quality of the walking environment, including more investments to promote pedestrian travel. Metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) are improving regional travel demand forecasting models to better represent walking and bicycling and to expand the evaluative capacity of models to address policy-relevant issues like air quality, public health, and the smart allocation of infrastructure and other resources. This report describes an innovative, spatially disaggregate method to integrate walking activity into trip-based travel models. Using data for the Portland, OR, metropolitan area, the method applies trip generation at a new micro-scale spatial unit: a 264-foot-by-264-foot …

Overlooked Destinations: Suburban Nodes, Centers, And Trips To Strips, Nico Larco, Robert Parker

TREC Final Reports

This study looks at travel to typical suburban commercial strips by residents living within one-third of a mile of the strip by focusing on six sites – four in the Portland, OR., metro area and two in the Atlanta, GA., metro area. The study mapped pedsheds around the commercial strips in these sites and found significant increases in network extents when formal and informal pedestrian paths were added to street centerline data. Informal networks such as goat paths through vacant land and cuts in fences were widespread and suggest a pent-up demand for route directness. Travel surveys of residents found …

Relocation Of Homeless People From Odot Rights-Of-Way, Ellen M. Bassett, Andrée Tremoulet, Allison Moe

TREC Final Reports

This research project consists of an investigation of responses to homeless encampments on rights-of-way owned by Departments of Transportation (DOTs). While DOTs are not housing or social service agencies, their role as major public landowners involves them in dealing with the consequences of homelessness. The research goals included analyzing the prevalence of the problem, documenting how DOTs are responding, and culling from this data information that could be used as a basis for creating a best practices guide. The research included a single mixed-methods, in-depth case study, electronic surveys of practitioners and follow-up interviews. Products consist of two reports (included …

Omsi - Clinton: A Corridor For Invention And Innovation, Todd Borkowitz, Katherine Dahlin, Gena Gastaldi, Kyle Goodman, Lisa Harrison, Szilvia Hosser-Cox, Irene Kim, Shihui Liu, Qi Liu, Lindsey Menard, Julia Metz, Corrie Minor, Eve Nilenders, John Tomasini, John Verssue, Kate Washington

Urban Design Workshop

This project focuses on developing a vision for the corridor between two new MAX light rail transit stations at OMSI and Clinton Street, which are part of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail (PMLR) project, connecting downtown Portland with north Clackamas County via southeast Portland.

This vision must be created with respect to the industrial sanctuary that flanks this stretch of light rail corridor to the west and the residential and light industry to the east.

This document is the product of a 2013 urban design workshop at Portland State University. The project builds upon three previous urban design workshops that focused …

Impact Of Rail Transit On The Denver Metro Region: Transportation And Land Use, Sutapa Bhattacharjee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among the reasons behind construction of the light rail system in the 1990s and 2000s and currently the FasTracks lines, in Denver metro region, has been reduction of traffic congestion and consolidation of land use. This research analyzes the success of the rail transit system in achieving the above-mentioned goals.

A temporal and spatial analysis of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) data from 1992 to 2008 on the highways in Denver has been conducted to determine if traffic congestion has reduced after the initial light rail service began in 1994. Temporal analysis provides an insight into the changes in the level …

Exploring Factors Contributing To Injury Severity At Freeway Merging And Diverging Locations In Ohio, Worku Y. Mergia, Deogratias Eustace, Deo Chimba, Maher Butros Qumsiyeh

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Faculty Publications

Identifying factors that affect crash injury severity and understanding how these factors affect injury severity is critical in planning and implementing highway safety improvement programs. Factors such as driver-related, traffic-related, environment-related and geometric design-related were considered when developing statistical models to predict the effects of these factors on the severity of injuries sustained from motor vehicle crashes at merging and diverging locations. Police-reported crash data at selected freeway merging and diverging areas in the state of Ohio were used for the development of the models. A generalized ordinal logit model also known as partial proportional odds model was applied to …

Research And Development Of A Land Use Scenario Modeling Tool, John Gliebe, Hongwei Dong, Josh Frank Roll

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Oregon Department of Transportation’s (ODOT) Transportation Planning and Analysis Unit (TPAU) developed a land use modeling tool called the “Land Use Scenario Developer in R” (LUSDR). LUSDR is a modeling tool, written in the “R” language, that may be used to predict and analyze regional land use changes probabilistically, creating a distribution of possible outcomes. It is designed to be integrated with travel demand modeling programs, making it potentially valuable for analyzing the interaction between transportation and land use when assessing various growth-policy and socioeconomic assumptions. This project is Phase 2 for Research and Development of a Land Use Scenario …

Police Injury Crashes And The Intersections Of Policy, Technology, And Culture, Carol Servino

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Motor vehicle crashes caused the majority fatalities to police officers in the U. S. for more than a decade, yet little is known about factors contributing to injury crashes. This research project required original data collection. A national survey of police chiefs in state, county, and local agencies of all sizes was conducted online in June and July, 2012. Questions focused on various driving policies and practices, including those related to communication technology commonly used in police patrol vehicles. Other questions included hypothetical situations to explore the culture of driving safety in individual police organizations. The majority of chiefs clearly …

Improved Pedestrian Safety At Signalized Intersections Operating The Flashing Yellow Arrow, David Hurwitz, Christopher M. Monsere

TREC Final Reports

In some jurisdictions, protected left-turn phasing has been replaced with the flashing yellow arrow (FYA) for protected/permissive left turns (PPLTs) to reduce delay. However, it is important to have a thorough understanding of the conflict between pedestrians and the permissive left-turning vehicle. This presentation summarizes the results of research conducted with a high-fidelity, motion-based driving simulator and mobile eye-tracking equipment to study the effects of the opposing traffic, the presence and walking direction of pedestrians, and the number of section heads to display the FYA on driver performance. To accomplish this research, a six-intersection simulated environment was created. In total, …

Development, Deployment, And Assessment Of A New Educational Paradigm For Transportation Professionals And University Students, Christopher M. Monsere

TREC Final Reports

Traditionally, engineering coursework has been delivered in a lecture-based format with accompanying exercises assigned for time outside of class. The activity-based approach to learning aims to keep students engaged in and responsible for their own learning processes. This approach has been shown to be more effective than conventional teaching approaches in terms of long-term retention of the educational material.

Measuring The Performance Of Transit Relative To Livability, Marc Schlossberg, Jennifer Dill, Liang Ma, Cody Meyer

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project sought to understand the relationship between urban form, transit service characteristics, and ridership measured at the stop level. Most previous work in this area has looked at these issues separately, by either linking system performance (e.g. on-time performance, cost, etc.) to ridership or exploring the connection between urban form (e.g. density) and transit use. This project synthesized these disparate approaches. While transit service characteristics (e.g. frequency, travel time, etc.) are important to help individuals reach their desired destinations, most transit users are pedestrians at the beginning and end of any transit trip. Therefore, focusing on the walkable zone …

Developing An Oregon Access Management Best Practices Manual, Karen Dixon, Xiang Yi, Lacy Brown, Robert Layton

TREC Final Reports

This report reviews an Oregon research effort to develop an Oregon Access Management Best Practices Manual. In particular, this research effort develops a resource to help transportation professionals quantify safety and operational effects of various access management strategies, provide measurable criteria to evaluate these access management techniques, and identify data collection practices necessary to successfully perform these assessments. It is the expectation that this manual can be used by engineers, decision makers, and educators to help the transportation community better understand the appropriate application of access management strategies and how to quantify benefits of the various access management options. This …