Urban Studies Commons^™

Project Phenom: A Smart Bike Project, Stephen Fickas

TREC Final Reports

This project introduces students to hands-on, experience-building, smart-transportation hardware and software. After completing the project, students will gain practical experience with integrating a set of inexpensive, commercial computer components to deliver a ready-to-install system that can extend the transportation grid of a city. They will also learn how to program the system to give bike riders and pedestrians in their community new power. Specifically, the system they build can give bicyclists and pedestrians a virtual push-button, allowing them to place a call for a green light prior to reaching an intersection, thus giving them the actual green light when they …

Electric Boost: Insights From A National E-Bike Owner Survey, John Macarthur, Michael Harpool, Daniel Scheppke, Christopher Cherry

TREC Project Briefs

Electric bicycle (e-bike) use is a rising phenomenon in North America, as a growing number of manufacturers produce a variety of bicycles which can accommodate the needs of diverse populations. With the growth of the e-bike industry, e-bike users are an increasingly integral part of both the transportation network and recreational trail system. However, little research has been conducted on e-bikes within North America, especially on the individuals who have purchased e-bikes.

Addressing Bicycle-Vehicle Conflicts With Alternate Signal Control Strategies, Sirisha Kothuri, Andrew Kading, Andrew Schrope, Kelly White, Edward Smaglik, Chris Aguilar, William Gil

TREC Final Reports

Over the last decade there has been increased interest in promoting active and sustainable transportation modes such as bicycling and walking especially in urban areas, as a means to alleviate congestion, lower emission levels and improve personal health. In urban areas, intersections are locations where a variety of modes converge, thus increasing the propensity for conflicts. Many bicycle-vehicle crashes occur at intersections. A common crash type involving bicycles at intersections is the “right-hook” where a right-turning vehicle collides with a through bicyclist. Intersections are also the source of increased stress for many bicyclists where the interactions with cars are more …

Overcoming Barriers For The Wide-Scale Adoption Of Standardized Real-Time Transit Information, Sean J. Barbeau

TREC Final Reports

In the last few years, a real-time counterpart to GTFS, GTFS-realtime [10], has begun to emerge, with agencies sharing their real-time data in this format. Previously, real-time transit information had only been shared in proprietary formats specific to each vendor or agency. GTFS-realtime offers the opportunity for application developers to create a mobile app that can function across a large number of cities and agencies, and for practitioners and researchers to be able to easily study and compare actual system performance across different transit systems using the same tools, without the overhead of manually transforming data into a consistent format. …

The Contribution Of Transportation And Land Use To Citizen Perceptions Of Livability In Oregon Mpos, Rebecca Lewis, Robert Parker

TREC Final Reports

What is livability? How does the built environment influence resident perceptions of livability? Although livability is a broadly used term and a key goal in land use and transportation plans at the state level, it is unclear whether residents think their neighborhoods are livable and what contributes to their perception of livability. The purpose of this project was to understand how Oregonians, in neighborhoods of varying densities and within Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), perceive livability at the nexus of transportation and land use. We sought to understand how residents define and perceive livability in three different MPOs in the state: …

Urban Geocomputation: Two Studies On Urban Form And Its Role In Altering Climate, Jackson Lee Voelkel

Dissertations and Theses

Our climate and our cities are changing. Though their changes are not completely dependent upon one another, there is still a coupling effect between them. This study assesses the role of urban form as it pertains to elements of climate change. It is comprised of two essays intended for publication. The first of these essays addresses the feedbacks between urban form, energy consumption, and rising global temperatures. The second essay looks at one particular factor of urban form--tree type--as it pertains to air pollution and urban heat island mitigation. Both papers use the analytical approaches necessary to answer the questions …

Insights On Walkability And Walking In Lisbon With The Iaape Method, Filipe Moura

PSU Transportation Seminars

Walkability and walking are being intensively researched today and the literature provides a wealth of references and examples on how to measure walkability of the built environment. IAAPE is one method that was developed at the Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon) to measure walkability at the micro-scale, bringing solutions that were disregarded in two aspects: it is a participatory process; and it provides different evaluations for different population segments (adults, children, seniors, impaired) or for different trip motivations.

Transit Demand Analysis And User Classification Using Automatic Fare Collection (Afc) Data, Alireza Khani

PSU Transportation Seminars

Development of origin-destination demand matrices is crucial for transit planning. The development process is facilitated by transit automated data, making it possible to mine boarding and alighting patterns on an individual basis. This research proposes a novel stochastic trip chaining method which uses Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) and General Transit Feed Specifications (GTFS) data to infer an origin-destination (O-D) matrix.

Citizen Advocacy For Safe Streets In Bremen, Germany, Anne Kirkham

PSU Transportation Seminars

Although Germany may be known internationally for its environmentalism, over the past 20 years German cities have chronically underinvested in transportation networks, both for public transport as well as non-motorized options. The lag in the development and expansion of sustainable options combined with the rapid growth in private automobile ownership (itself the result of automobile-industry-friendly policymaking) means that cities like Bremen have been left behind in terms of transportation planning. As in America, SUV sales continue to increase despite considerably narrower streets, particularly in cities.

Nowhere is this more visible than in Bremen’s Neustadt, a dense neighbourhood with the most …

Tools And Techniques For Teaching Collaborative Regional Planning And Enhancing Livability And Sustainable Transportation In Gateway And Natural Amenity Regions, Danya Rumore, Divya Chandrasekhar, Sarah Hinnars

TREC Final Reports

Communities throughout the nation face a variety of interconnected transportation, livability and sustainability challenges that can only be effectively addressed through regional planning collaboration. These challenges are particularly pressing in gateway and natural amenity region (GNAR) communities throughout the western United States. This project engaged graduate students in developing curricular materials to teach planning students, professional planners and community members (1) the core concepts and skills of regional collaborative transportation and land use planning and (2) about the unique transportation and planning-related challenges and opportunities in GNAR communities. It did so through an applied graduate-level studio course taught in fall …

Central Point School District 6 Enrollment Forecast Update 2018-19 To 2027-28, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Nicholas Chun, Joshua Ollinger

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents a range of three scenarios of district‐wide enrollment forecasts by grade level for Central Point School District 6 (CPSD) for the 10 year period between 2018‐19 and 2027‐28. Each enrollment forecast scenario is related to population forecasts that incorporate different assumptions about growth within the District, with the primary differences being the contribution of net migration to the District’s population and age distribution. Individual school forecasts consistent with the middle series are also presented for the 10 year period.

Teaching Transportation Planning In Natural Amenity Regions, Danya Rumore, Divya Chandrasekhar, Sarah Hinnars

TREC Project Briefs

National parks and other natural amenities, because of their influx of visitors, can experience “big city problems” like congestion and sprawl. This education project developed strategies for teaching transportation planning in these unique communities.

A North American Survey Of Electric Bicycle Owners, John Macarthur, Michael Harpool, Daniel Scheppke, Christopher Cherry

TREC Final Reports

Electric bicycle (e-bike) use is a rising phenomenon in North America as a growing number of manufacturers produce a variety of bicycles which can accommodate the needs of diverse populations. With the growth of the e-bike industry, e-bike users are an increasingly integral part of both the transportation network and recreational trail system. However, little research has been conducted on e-bikes within North America, especially on the individuals who have purchased e-bikes. The first-known U.S. e-bike owner survey was conducted by Portland State University in 2013. The 2013 survey aimed to understand whether e-bikes have the capacity to reduce barriers …

Development Of Rdsetgo: A Rapidly Deployable Structural Evaluation Toolkit For Global Observation, Charles Riley

TREC Final Reports

The most expensive and critical links in the nation’s transportation network are its bridges. Historical and contemporary bridge failures have highlighted our reliance on these structures. While the nation’s bridge management system is robust and well administered, the tools needed to evaluate individual bridges to determine their condition, whether for asset management or in response to a significant loading event such as the imminent Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, are currently highly specialized. The goal of this study was to develop a cost-effective, accurate, and easily deployed evaluation tool using widely available mobile technology, specifically iPods, to …

Assessing Vulnerability To Urban Heat: A Study Of Disproportionate Heat Exposure And Access To Refuge By Socio-Demographic Status In Portland, Oregon, Jackson Voelkel, Dana E. Hellman, Ryu Sakuma, Vivek Shandas

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Extreme urban heat is a powerful environmental stressor which poses a significant threat to human health and well-being. Exacerbated by the urban heat island phenomenon, heat events are expected to become more intense and frequent as climate change progresses, though we have limited understanding of the impact of such events on vulnerable populations at a neighborhood or census block group level. Focusing on the City of Portland, Oregon, this study aimed to determine which socio-demographic populations experience disproportionate exposure to extreme heat, as well as the level of access to refuge in the form of public cooling centers or residential …

A Portable Toolkit For Testing Bridge Structural Integrity, Charles Riley

TREC Project Briefs

The goal of this study was to develop a cost-effective, accurate, and easily deployed evaluation tool using widely available mobile technology (specifically iPods) to measure the dynamic structural response of a bridge subjected to harmonic forcing. Researchers leveraged principles of structural mechanics, dynamics, and vibrations, as well as a significant body of literature, to conceive a system that could complement existing visual inspection methods to support bridge condition evaluation and rating. The outcome of the project is the Rapidly Deployable Structural Evaluation Toolkit for Global Observation, or RDSETGO.

Webinar: Pooled Fund Grant 2018 - Tackling Transportation Together, Eva-Maria Muecke

TREC Webinar Series

Information session on the Pooled Fund Research Grant

One champion identifies a problem that is common to other agencies, cities, or MPOs and then recruits other partners who are willing to collaborate and contribute financially to the project. At this point, NITC steps in and matches the funds that the partners pooled – making it possible to pursue a question that is greater in scope than any one agency or city could pursue on its own. Simple process, right? Maybe not! Yet, this process can be exciting, empowering and, most importantly, lead to the implementation of a project that produces …

Bicycles & Business Success - A San Francisco Examination, Joseph Poirier

PSU Transportation Seminars

This presentation will review research regarding the economic impact of bicycle infrastructure on local businesses. Three case study corridors in San Francisco, CA are examined, and a robust discussion of the shortcomings of the research will be included. A question and open discussion period will follow, with a focus on constructive criticism of past research and methods to improve future work.

Recent Advances In Activity-Based Travel Demand Models For Greater Flexibility, Kihong Kim

Dissertations and Theses

Most existing activity-based travel demand models are implemented in a tour-based microsimulation framework. Due to the significant computational and data storage benefits, the demand microsimulation allows a greater amount of flexibility in terms of demographic market segmentation, temporal scale, and spatial resolution, and thus the models can represent a wider range of travel behavior aspects associated with various policies and scenarios. This dissertation proposes three innovative methodologies, one for each of the three key dimensions, to fulfill the greater level of details toward a more mature state of activity-based travel demand models.

Road Diet V2.0 - Road Diet With Roundabouts, Michael Williams

PSU Transportation Seminars

How can we go one step, or one lane, further than the standard road diet? Roundabouts allow a road diet to reduce the final number of lanes from three to two.

Questions arise when roundabouts are used with a road diet. What traffic volumes are supportable? Will the roundabouts fit within existing intersections? What does current guidance tell us about this approach?

Michael Williams will present his work on creating a sequel to FHWA’s Road Diet Informational Guide. This work is intended to provide a feasibility determination tool for the application of this approach to existing corridors. Data from Bird …

Urban Transportation Planning And Tod Research In Japan, Fumihiko Nakamura

PSU Transportation Seminars

Presentation on Urban Transportation Planning and Transit-oriented development (TOD) Research in Japan.

Goodbye To The National Endowment For The Arts?, Naomi Adiv

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the shadow of the truly egregious policies rolled out by the Trump administration in their first year in office (anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies, de-staffing the State Department into paralysis, shrinking national monuments, strangling the ACA), and a general tone of chaos surrounding the office of the presidency, a standing threat remains. That is: among other cuts, freezes and gag orders, the administration has vowed to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Here, I demonstrate how current political arguments around defunding the NEA are derived …

Evaluation Of Route Changes Utilizing High-Resolution Gps Bus Transit Data, Travis Bradley Glick

PSU Transportation Seminars

Congestion and travel delay on urban roadways can influence operating costs and service attractiveness. This research uses high resolution bus data to examine sources of delay on urban arterials. A set of tools was created to help visualize trends in bus behavior and movement; this allowed 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 can be used to understand the behavior of roadways outside the zone of influence of bus stops. Speed plots can be utilized to discover trends and travel patterns with …

Valuing Bicycle Infrastructure In Portland, Oregon, Wei Shi

PSU Transportation Seminars

Investments into active transportation infrastructure are often promoted as a strategy for sustainable transportation, better public health, environmental quality, and economic development. Although empirical evidence generally points toward positive property value impacts of off-street greenways and trails, few focus on whether households might have different willingness-to-pay for different types and levels of bicycle infrastructure. This paper aims to fill research gaps in understanding consumer preferences for different types of bicycle facilities by examining property value impacts of four bicycle facility types: on-street advanced bike facilities and bike lanes; and off-street regional multi-use paths and local multi-use paths. Using Portland, Oregon …

Hedonic Modeling Of Commercial Property Values: Distance Decay From The Links And Nodes Of Rail And Highway Infrastructure, Kihwan Seo, Deborah Salon, Michael Kuby, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study investigates the impacts of positive and negative externalities of highways and light rail on commercial property values in Phoenix, Arizona. We hypothesize that the positive externality (i.e., accessibility) of highway and light rail accrues at exits and stations, whereas nodes and links of highways and light rail emanate negative effects. Positive and negative effects decay with increasing distance and are captured by multiple distance bands. Hypotheses are tested using a spatial error regression model. Results show that commercial property values are positively and significantly associated with the accessibility benefits of transport nodes. The distance-band coefficients form a typical …

Defining Place: A Review Of How Place Type Is Measured And Constructed, Kelly Rodgers

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

Researchers have been parsing which components of the built environment contribute to outcomes of interest and to what degree, particularly the effects on vehicle use and walking. Increasingly, researchers and practitioners recognize that the type of neighborhood may affect individual travel behaviors. These bundle of various land use and transportation system characteristics can be constructed as different neighborhood or place types. But not all place types are constructed with the same use, purpose, or methods. This presentation will review three classifications of place typologies to better understand their purpose and appropriate application as …

Density Differences: Exploring Built Environment Relationships With Walking Between And Within Metropolitan Areas, Jamie Orrego

PSU Transportation Seminars

Part of the Student Presentations from TRB

To explore the relationships between measures of density and walking within and between urban areas, we present an analysis of the travel survey data from six different cities from the US and Santiago, Chile. The analysis of aggregate and disaggregate pedestrian trips presented here examine the potential consistency of relationships between walking and density within and across different regions, with a specific focus on population density. Our findings illustrate a relationship between population density and walk mode shares that is roughly linear and of nearly equal magnitude across US regions in densities below …

Webinar: An Accessible Approach To Shared Streets, Jim Elliott, Janet Barlow, Dan Goodman

TREC Webinar Series

In October 2017 the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) unveiled a groundbreaking new resource on planning and designing shared streets to accommodate people with vision disabilities. The first report of its kind, Accessible Shared Streets: Notable Practices and Considerations for Accommodating Pedestrians with Vision Disabilities (learn more and download the report) / (access the 508 version here) introduces accessible design principles for shared streets based on detailed research and extensive outreach, equipping communities to pursue new designs that are accessible for people with vision disabilities. Drawing from notable practices, public outreach, and field analysis from multiple US …

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 …