Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

What Makes Cents? How Uber Shapes Municipal On-Street Parking Revenue, Anne Brown, Benjamin Y. Clark

TREC Final Reports

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) will challenge cities in many ways that are critical to address before widescale adoption. In particular, AVs may upset municipal budgets as they upend traditional auto-related funding streams like registration fees and parking revenues. This research begins to quantify the potential financial impacts of AVs by analyzing current associations between transportation network company (TNC) trips—often viewed as a precursor of AVs—and parking revenue. This report uses TNCs as a proxy for future AV travel to examine the connections between trip-making and on-street parking occupancy and revenue. Specifically, we use Uber trip data along with built environment and …

Will Automated Vehicles Cut Parking Revenue? Not Overnight, But Cities Should Plan Ahead, Benjamin Y. Clark, Anne Brown

TREC Project Briefs

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) will challenge cities in ways that are difficult to fully predict, yet critical to address. A particular challenge is the potential for AVs to upset municipal budgets, as they upend traditional auto-related funding streams like vehicle registration fees and parking revenues. To prepare for this uncertain future, cities should practice scenario planning to understand revenue implications and identify alternative solutions

Cascade 30: Historic Columbia River Highway Active Transportation Network Plan, Jeff Broderick, Timothy Dubois, Seth Healy, Henry Miller, Elisha Ransom, Justin Sherrill

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

While Apiary Planning Group created design concepts for the Oregon Department of Transportation, it should be noted these are only design concepts, not a final proposal. Funding to commence formal planning, engineering, and construction processes to implement these ideas has not been identified. No timeline to build any of these concepts has been established. Apiary Planning Group hopes these preliminary concepts will encourage and inspire jurisdictions, community groups, residents and businesses to work together to create a gateway to Hood River that honors the past while creating new, safer and accessible transportation opportunities in the future.

Webinar: Findings From 15 Years Of Travel Surveys At Portland Area Transit-Oriented Developments (Tods), Jennifer Dill, Nathan Mcneil

TREC Webinar Series

Since 2005, Portland State University has periodically surveyed occupants of recently developed higher-density and mixed-use projects near transit, often referred to as Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs). The general objectives of the surveys were to better understand actual transit use, among other factors, of residents in these buildings. Between 2005 and 2018, the research team surveyed residents of nearly 50 TODs. With funding from Metro and the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, the research team carried out a two-pronged study drawing on this wealth of data. First, we explore geographic differences within the Portland region in terms of travel behavior and …

Clackamas Community College Shuttle Service And Access Plan, Shiori Azumaya, Ryan Mckinnon, Christina Winberry, Daisy Quinonez, Baxter Shandobil, Andre Lightsey-Walker

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Addressing transportation-related barriers is an essential part of Clackamas Community College's mission to make education more accessible. This plan provides a student-centered analysis of barriers that make it difficult for students with limited access to personal vehicles to access CCC’s Oregon City and Harmony campuses and identifies strategies to overcome them. The plan focuses on the CCC Xpress Shuttle, which sees over 26,500 trips per academic year, and on the compounded barriers facing students of color, low-income students, and students with disabilities.

Steering New Mobility In The Right Direction: Matching The Speed Of Technology With The Speed Of Local Government, Marc Schlossberg, Heather Brinton

TREC Project Briefs

Advances in transportation technology — e-scooters and bike share, Lyft & Uber, and autonomous vehicles — are beginning to have profound impacts on cities. New mobility is changing not only how we travel, but also urban form and development itself. In the near future, we can expect differences in what public transit looks like, the layout of cities, and the places we spend our time. In turn, these changes will likely have additional effects on land use, street design, parking, housing, equity, and municipal finance. Will cities be ready to meet these changes? Rather than be swept along in the …

Matching The Speed Of Technology With The Speed Of Local Government: Developing Codes And Policies Related To The Possible Impacts Of New Mobility On Cities, Marc Schlossberg, Heather Brinton

TREC Final Reports

Advances in transportation technology such as the advent of scooter and bikeshare systems (micromobility), ridehailing, and autonomous vehicles (AV’s) are beginning to have profound effects not only on how we live, move, and spend our time in cities, but also on urban form and development itself. These new technologies are changing the systems of transport, the layout of cities, and the places we spend our time. In turn, these changes will likely have additional and profound effects on land use, street design, parking, housing, equity, municipal finance, and fundamental issues related to urban density, sprawl, vitality and the economic viability …

"I Should Have Moved Somewhere Else": The Impacts Of Gentrification On Transportation And Social Support For Black Working-Poor Families In Portland, Oregon, Steven Anthony Howland

Dissertations and Theses

Portland has faced a mass displacement of Black households from the historically segregated area of Albina through various phases of urban renewal, urban deterioration, and gentrification. A substantial number of them have moved to East Portland, a suburban segment of the City of Portland that was unincorporated county land prior to the 1990's. As Black people have left Albina, the roots of Blackness there have eroded from the area as businesses and churches catering to them have also closed as a result of lost patrons.

In this study I interviewed 27 low-income working-age Black people with children with the sample …

Understanding Technology-Based Exclusion In Emerging Smart Mobility Systems, John Macarthur, Aaron Golub

PSU Transportation Seminars

As transit agencies modernize their fare payment systems, opportunities to pay with cash are reduced. This speeds boarding and lowers the cost of operations while also creating new sources of ridership data. Arguably, service is improved for riders as well as payment systems could work across modes, creating a more seamless and simplified experience. Still, about 15% of adults in the United States are without a bank account or credit card account and many rely on restrictive cell-phone data plans or don’t have access to a smartphone. These shares are even higher for public transit users. These un- and under-banked …

Suitability Of Fusing Vehicle Probe Data And Vessel Data To Contextualize The Multimodal Interaction Impacts On Corridor Mobility – A New Orleans Case Study, Kirk Zeringue

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Using New Orleans as a case study, this thesis explores the conflation of vehicle probe data with various vessel datasets to characterize the interactions between container vessels and motor vehicles as it relates to interstate congestion in a port city. The case study investigates the impact of container vessel presence/size, fluctuations in container volumes, and container on barge services on roadway congestion. The exploration relies on comparing different conditions using cumulative distribution functions and the Innovative Trend Analysis. The results showed that fusing vehicle and vessel data is achievable and appropriate, but temporal and data completeness issues can effect results. …

Webinar: Natural Pozzolans In The Pacific Northwest And Their Beneficial Uses, Matthew D. Sleep

TREC Webinar Series

The eruption of Mt. Mazama approximately 7,700 years ago created what is now known as Crater Lake. This eruption blanketed the Pacific Northwest with volcanic ash. This volcanic ash has been collected from several locations in Southern Oregon near the Oregon Institute of Technology campus. This volcanic ash has been tested and shown to have properties beneficial of a natural pozzolan. This seminar will present the results of a significant laboratory program to determine the natural pozzolanic capabilities of Mt. Mazama volcanic ash. In addition, information will be presented on a field application using the material to create ADA accessible …

Safe Speeds Save Lives: How Portland Is Managing Speeds For Safety, Matt Kelly

PSU Transportation Seminars

Speed is a key factor in how people experience Portland’s streets. Appropriate speeds help prevent crashes, reduce the harmful consequences of crashes, and can help streets become more comfortable and sociable spaces that support a variety of travel modes and uses. The Portland Bureau of Transportation will share information on how the City of Portland is supporting safe travel speeds through its Vision Zero work. Topics will include the left turn calming pilot project, speed safety cameras, speed limit reductions, and road reorganizations. Data on the results of these interventions will be shared, along with discussion of next steps for …

Webinar: Connected Vehicle System Design For Signalized Arterials, Xianfeng Terry Yang

TREC Webinar Series

It can be expected that connected vehicles (CVs) systems will soon go beyond testbed and appear in real-world applications. To accommodate a large number of connected vehicles on the roads, traffic signal control systems on signalized arterials would require supports of various components such as roadside infrastructure, vehicle on-board devices, an effective communication network, and optimal control algorithms. In this project, we aim to establish a real-time and adaptive system for supporting the operations of CV-based traffic signal control functions. The proposed system will prioritize the communication needs of different types of CVs and best utilize the capacity of the …

Creating And Using A Publicly Available Multimodal Transportation Data Archive, Tammy Lee, Kristin A. Tufte

PSU Transportation Seminars

PORTAL provides a centralized, electronic database that facilitates the collection, archiving, and sharing of data and information for public agencies within the region. The data stored in PORTAL includes 20-second granularity loop detector data from freeways in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region, arterial signal data, travel time data, weather data, incident data, VAS/VMS message data, truck volumes, transit data, and arterial signal data. Many of these data feeds are received by PORTAL in real time or on a daily basis and for most, the retrieval and archiving process is fully automated.

BikePed Portal: Jurisdictions around the country are collecting non-motorized …

Mount Mazama Ash Offers Sustainable Solution For Ada Accessibility On Unpaved Trails, Matthew D. Sleep, Damian K. Matzen

TREC Project Briefs

National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) researcher Matthew Sleep of Oregon Tech investigated whether Mazama ash could be used in place of portland cement, as a natural pozzolan. Results indicate that it can—and unpaved trail surfaces made with Mazama ash are actually firmer and more durable than those made with portland cement alone. Such trails can provide a reliable surface for wheeled mobility devices.

Ada Accessible Trail Improvement With Naturally Occurring, Sustainable Materials, Matthew D. Sleep, Damian K. Matzen

TREC Final Reports

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides specific guidelines and requirements that must be met in terms of accessibility. However, in the case of unpaved trails, the requirements are less defined. An ADA trail must be firm, stable and slip resistant. Some compacted aggregate material may meet this definition, but degrade over time and can no longer be ADA compliant. The benefits of using unpaved surfaces for ADA trails include fit to the natural environment, cost, sustainability and environmental benefits such as increased permeability. If an unpaved surface can be improved with the use of an additive, more could be …

What Do 15 Years Of Travel Surveys Tell Us About Tod Residents?, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill

TREC Project Briefs

Does living in a transit-oriented development (TOD) actually change the way people travel? That’s the fundamental question that 15 years of research in Portland, Oregon seeks to answer. Since 2005, Portland State University has worked with Portland’s Metro regional government to survey occupants of buildings for which developers had received funding from Metro’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Program. Metro strategically invests in TODs to help more people live, work and shop in neighborhoods served by high-quality transit.

“Revisiting TODs,” the latest installment in this research, is led by Nathan McNeil, a research associate in PSU’s School of Urban Studies & Planning, …

Revisiting Tods: How Subsequent Development Affects The Travel Behavior Of Residents In Existing Transit-Oriented Developments, Nathan Mcneil, Jennifer Dill

TREC Final Reports

Portland State University has worked with the Portland Metro regional government periodically since 2005 to survey occupants of buildings for which developers had received funding from Metro’s Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Program. This research extends upon the prior TOD surveys in Portland by revisiting a set of developments with a second wave of surveys to understand how the travel behavior of TOD residents may change over time, and what factors influence change in travel patterns. The second-wave surveys, coming 8-13 years after the baseline surveys, include five TODs in the west-side Portland suburbs of Hillsboro and Beaverton, two TODs in East …

A No-Crash Course In Vision Zero Data, Anamaria Perez

PSU Transportation Seminars

Vision Zero was adopted unanimously by Portland City Council in 2015 with the goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries on Portland streets in a way that is equitable, accountable, and data-driven. But what does it mean to be data-driven? And should we stop there?

In this presentation, learn how Portland’s Vision Zero Action Plan was developed and how the Vision Zero team is using data to move into a future where all Portlanders can travel safely, regardless of the travel mode they use. Explore the datasets used in Vision Zero implementation and the challenges that come with them. …

Moving Toward Equitable Transit-Oriented Developments By Integrating Transit And Housing, Hongwei Dong

PSU Transportation Seminars

Prior studies show that transit-oriented developments (TODs) increase property values and raise property tax revenue. Property owners reap economic benefit from TODs and public officials use it as evidence to justify the high cost of rail transit. However, renters, who rely on transit more than homeowners, may have to pay higher rent to live in TODs. The location affordability index at the neighborhood level suggests that renters can also benefit from TOD by saving money on transportation costs. Recent studies at the individual level, however, found little evidence that living in TODs reduces transportation expenditure. Using rental data scraped from …

Webinar: Visual Exploration Of Trajectory Data, Nikola Markovic, Mark Franz, Seth Miller

TREC Webinar Series

This webinar will demonstrate the tremendous value of GPS trajectory data in understanding statewide travel patterns and measuring performance. First, Dr. Markovic (U of Utah) will conduct visual exploration of GPS trajectories that capture about 3% of all the trips in Utah. He will briefly discuss the problem of scaling GPS trajectories to the population, and then focus on the use of scaled trajectories in computing origin-destination matrices, vehicle-hours delays, vehicle-miles traveled, and trip-based performance measures. Second, Dr. Franz (CATT Lab) will demonstrate a suite of visual analytics that enables transportation agencies to easily explore terabytes of GPS trajectory data. …

Bus-Bike Designs For The Division Transit Project, Derek Abe, Jesse Stemmier

PSU Transportation Seminars

This seminar is brought to you by the Oregon chapter of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP), with support from TREC at Portland State.

Transit stops and stations are a confluence of complementary and competing activities - pedestrians accessing businesses, passengers boarding and alighting, and bicyclists zipping through to their destinations. People are moving in different directions, at different speeds, and need to be able to navigate this space safely and comfortably. A common point of conflict is the bus/bicycle interaction when a transit stop is adjacent to a bike lane. Designs for integrating pedestrian and bicycle …

Understanding Economic And Business Impacts Of Street Improvements For Bicycle And Pedestrian Mobility, Jenny H. Liu, Wei Shi

TREC Project Briefs

This research explored a systematic framework for evaluating the economic development effects of corridor-level bicycle or pedestrian street improvements across a number of corridors in multiple cities.

It is our hope that the results of our research will encourage the application of similar corridor selection processes, data collection efforts and multimethod analyses in additional corridors and cities around the country, and will provide a solid basis for policymakers, planners and other stakeholders considering street improvement infrastructure for pedestrian and bicycle mobility to make evidence-based investment decisions.

Connections With(In): Exploring The Intangibles Of Public Transit In Prague, Sarah Stapleton

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This project explores the connection (physically and metaphorically) local users have to the public transit systems in Prague, recognizing and highlighting their gathered subjective experiences through a creative piece. The methods included a review of the history, planning, and development of the public transit systems (metro and tram) across time, as well the sociopolitical timeframe these occurred through. After rooting her knowledge within the relevant literature and history, the author asked six local users of public transit a series of 10 questions about their relationships, memories, stories, and feelings connected to traveling through the public transportation systems. These interviews and …

Connected Vehicle System Design For Signalized Arterials, Xianfeng Terry Yang, Mingyue Ji, Qinzheng Wang

TREC Final Reports

It can be expected that connected vehicles (CVs) systems will soon go beyond testbed and appear in real-world applications. To accommodate a large number of connected vehicles on the roads, traffic signal control systems on signalized arterials would require supports of various components such as roadside infrastructure, vehicle on-board devices, an effective communication network, and optimal control algorithms. In this project, we aim to establish a real-time and adaptive system for supporting the operations of CV-based traffic signal control functions. The proposed system will prioritize the communication needs of different types of CVs and best utilize the capacity of the …

Understanding Economic And Business Impacts Of Street Improvements For Bicycle And Mobility – A Multicity Multiapproach Exploration, Jenny H. Liu, Wei Shi

TREC Final Reports

Many cities across the country, as part of Complete Streets initiatives or to promote community livability and environmental sustainability, have engaged in street improvement or transportation infrastructure upgrade projects that increase access and mobility for pedestrians and bicyclists through a reduction of on-street parking or traffic lanes. With various transportation modes competing for scarce resources (including right-of-way and transportation funding), city planners and transportation agencies often struggle with how to justify these infrastructure investments for non-motorized modes such as bicycling and walking, particularly when driving is still the predominant mode of transportation in most cities. There is a vital need …

The Impacts Of The Bicycle Network On Bicycling Activity: A Longitudinal Multi-City Approach, Wei Shi

Dissertations and Theses

Bicycling is a promising approach to improve health, environment, and economic development of urban places. Theoretically, a bicycle network's component goes beyond lanes and paths, and would generate greater impacts than the sum of its parts. However, most previous research focused on how individual types of bicycle-related infrastructure could promote bicycling. Few empirical studies investigated how bicycle networks impact bicycling activity. This project attempts to address this question. Specifically, how to properly measure bicycle networks, and what impacts bicycle networks have on bicycling activity, e.g. bike ridership and bike mode choice, across different cities and longitudinally.

To address the first …

Webinar: When Growth Outpaces Infrastructure: A Community-Engaged Assessment Of Transportation Gaps, Jandel Crutchfield, Kate Hyun

TREC Webinar Series

This study used a community-engaged interdisciplinary approach to assess the gaps between economic growth and transportation infrastructure development, and the impact of potential gaps on access to opportunities for environmental justice populations within North Central Texas, where population growth has increased over 100% since 2000.

The interdisciplinary team, comprised of social work and civil engineering researchers, in partnership with the regional homeless coalition, measured residents’ perspectives of:

• the economic growth in the area over the past decade,
• the extent to which transportation infrastructure has matched the economic growth, and
• the implications for access to affordable quality housing, employment, quality public …

The Future State Of Mobility, Jerome Quandt

Purdue Road School

Formed in 2018, the Illinois Autonomous Vehicles Association (ILAVA) is a privately funded non-for-profit organization focused on establishing thought leadership in the state of Illinois, by identifying and addressing the current and emerging opportunities related to the inevitable growth of CAV technologies throughout the transportation network. Through the deployment of scalable and sustainable business solutions, facilitating industry education and establishing thought leadership, ILAVA is creating an ecosystem that defines Illinois as #TheFutureStateofMobility.

Visualizing Statewide Trips: Tools To Leverage Gps Data In Transportation Planning, Nikola Markovic

TREC Project Briefs

The University of Utah has a new data visualization service to offer to state DOTs and other agencies. Using Small Starts funding from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), researcher Nikola Markovic and his team have developed a suite of visual analysis tools to demonstrate how GPS trajectory data can help accurately model and analyze mobility trends. These data are typically purchased from vendors, which means that transportation agencies must first understand the benefits before they decide to invest in data acquisition.