Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Exchange Patterns And Relations In Collaborative Governance., Charles Wharton Kaye-Essien

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collaborative governance has received considerable attention in recent years. From environmental resource management to public safety, collaborative governance continues to play a vital role in regional problem solving. In spite of this increasing popularity previous attempts to model the political, economic, and demographic determinants of collaboration have in most cases produced inconsistent results, thereby undermining the ability to generalize from such findings. Additionally, our understanding of the relational patterns that emanate from collaborative agreements remains fairly rudimentary. The main objective of this research is to address some of the gaps in the literature and improve our understanding of collaborative governance …

Track Time And Monetary Costs Of Transportation As A Comprehensive Performance Measure: Development And Application Of Transportation Cost Index, Liming Wang

PSU Transportation Seminars

As federal and state policies place increasing emphasis on using comprehensive transportation performance measures to guide transportation decision making, there is a gap in such measures of transportation and land use systems. This seminar reports the results from a research project aiming to fill the gap in the type of applications and policy areas covered by existing measures. Modeled after the popular Consumer Price Index, the project refines and develops a transportation cost index (TCI) measure for transportation and land use systems by tracking the time and monetary costs of transportation for households as they travel to satisfy their daily …

Webinar: Evaluation Of An Electric Bike Pilot Project In Portland, Oregon, John Macarthur

TREC Webinar Series

Oregon, and Portland in particular, is internationally known for its love for bikes. Not only does the region have some of the highest bike ridership in the nation but the Oregon bike manufacturing industry is quickly growing as well. Oregon’s electric bike (e-bike) market is also growing, but little data are available on the potential market and e-bike user behavior and interest.

Only a limited amount of research has explored the potential new market segments for e-bikes and the economic, operational, safety, and transportation issues surrounding e-bikes in the United States. This webinar will present findings from a research project …

Understanding Transportation In Urban China - Local Residents Vs Migrant Workers, Jenny H. Liu

PSU Transportation Seminars

With rapid urbanization in China and other developing economies around the world, it has become imperative to understand household transportation behavior and expenditures in these urban areas. The objective of this study is to examine the differences in the determinants of household transportation expenditures within two very distinct populations in Chinese cities: local residents and migrant workers.

In order to craft policies or strategies promoting sustainable transportation or livability, it is essential to understand whether the drivers that push the migrant population towards spending more on transportation or owning bikes or motorbikes are similar to drivers for the rest of …

The Myth Of Oregon's "Freight Dependent" Economy, Joe Cortright

PSU Transportation Seminars

Although it is widely claimed that Oregon's economy is dependent on freight movement, economic activity in Oregon has decoupled from physical goods movement. Truck traffic per unit of gross state product has fallen, and even the loss of regular container service to Portland has had no measurable effect on the region's economy.

Oregon's economy has shifted away from freight intensive industries and now depends on knowledge driven sectors (e.g. electronics, software, athletic apparel and footwear professional services) that move very small amounts of freight. In addition freight costs for most output is so small—and declining—that it is a negligible factor …

“La Guerra De Los Centavos” Y Contratos Sociales: Los Impactos Del Desarrollo Del Sistema Intermodal De Transporte Urbano En Loja, Ecuador / "The War Of The Cents" And Social Contracts: The Impacts Of The Development Of The Intermodal Urban Transportation System In Loja, Ecuador, Will Yetvin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

El propósito de este estudio fue investigar el Sistema Intermodal de Transporte Urbano (SITU) en la ciudad de Loja, Ecuador. El contenido del estudio se basa en mis observaciones y entrevistas durante mi tiempo trabajando con la Unidad de Transporte del Municipio de Loja, y en fuentes bibliográficas relacionadas con los temas de transporte urbano, transporte sostenible, bus de rápido tránsito y gobiernos descentralizados. Además, utilicé un tesoro de documentos internos del Municipio y el Consorcio. Mi análisis es influenciado por el marco conceptual de desarrollo sostenible.

Este informe es organizado alrededor de tres temas vinculados pero distintos; 1) Un …

Rerouting Mode Choice Models: ​H​Ow Including Realistic Route Options Can Help Us Understand Decisions To Walk Or Bike, Joseph Broach

PSU Transportation Seminars

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 successfully model bike and walk travel. In the past five years, we have learned a lot about where people prefer to bike and walk, but what can that tell us about whether people will bike or walk in the first place? The research presented here is designed to start bridging the gap …

Measuring And Modeling Cyclists’ Comfort And Stress Levels, Miguel Figliozzi

PSU Transportation Seminars

Some researchers have tried to categorize cyclists’ levels of traffic stress utilizing facility or traffic data that can be readily measured in the field, such as motorized travel lanes, travel speeds, and type of bicycle infrastructure.

This seminar will present data and modeling results utilizing two novel data sources:

(a) real-world, on-road measurements of physiological stress as cyclists travel across different types of facilities and

(b) data collected utilizing a smartphone app called ORcycle (http://www.pdx.edu/transportation-lab/orcycle).

This presentation will discuss key findings and potential policy implications.

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 …

A Taste For Transit? Analyzing Public Transit Use Trends Among Youth, Anne E. Brown, Evelyn Blumenberg, Brian D. Taylor, Kelcie Ralph, Carole Turley Voulgaris

Journal of Public Transportation

In the past decade, there has been much talk about a decline in driving among youth. This study examined whether this decline is associated with an increased reliance on public transit. To address this issue, 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) data were used to analyze the relationship between age and transit use. Findings indicate that although young adults are more likely to ride transit than older adults, transit use among youth can be explained largely by (1) life cycle factors common among young people but unlikely to persist as they age, (2) higher levels of transit use …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

Transportation Cost Index As A Performance Measure For Transportation And Land Use Systems: New Approaches And Applications, Liming Wang, Huajie Yang, Jenny H. Liu

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This research aims to fill gaps in existing multi-modal performance measures for transportation and land use systems:

1. As a supplement/replacement of traffic-centric measures such as LOS, travel delay;
2. Recent federal and state legislations put more emphases on using of performance measures in transportation planning & operation: MAP-21, Oregon Job and Transportation Act (OJTA);
3. Existing performance measures for transportation and land use systems, although now numerous, have their own limitation (Table 1), and leave important aspects and policy areas uncovered, for example, the balance of transportation investment between different modes and across geographical areas as mandated by OJTA

Night Access Plan, Lea Anderson, David Backes, Abe Moland, Taylor Phillips, Rae-Leigh Stark, Shane Valle

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

Oregon Health and Science University is a microcosm of the 24-hour city, and it’s essential that patients, employees, students and others have safe and convenient 24-hour access to its medical campuses. Access to and from the main campus is always complicated, but even more so at night. The Night Access Plan lays out a strategy to make getting to and from OHSU at night and early in the morning safer, more convenient, and affordable.

A video about this project may be viewed here.

This project was conducted under the supervision of Matthew Gebhardt, Susan Gibson-Hartnett, Ethan Seltzer and Marisa …

Accuracy Of Bicycle Counting With Pneumatic Tubes In Oregon, Krista Nordback, Sirisha Murthy Kothuri, Taylor Phillips, Carson Gorecki, Miguel Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Interest in counting bicycles and establishing nonmotorized counting programs is increasing, but jurisdictions still struggle with how to integrate bicycle counting into standard practice. In this paper, the authors share findings and recommendations for how to minimize error for bicycle counting from tests conducted in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Transportation. This research studied three types of off-the-shelf pneumatic tube counters for counting bicycles, including equipment from five manufacturers: two bicycle-specific counters, three varieties of motor vehicle classification counters, and one volume-only motor vehicle counter. Tests were conducted both in a controlled environment and in on-road mixed traffic to …

Cargo Cycles For Local And Last Mile Delivery: Lessons From New York City, Alison Conway

PSU Transportation Seminars

Cities depend on safe and efficient goods movement to support community livability and a healthy economy. However, delivery of goods in an urban environment presents a tremendous challenge. Traditional motorized vehicles used for goods movement – ranging from cargo vans to box trucks - are inherently incompatible with (1) the multimodal street environments of modern cities, with clean, quiet conditions preferred by residents, and (2) larger environmental sustainability goals. As freight flows continue to grow with the demands of global trade, new urban freight and city logistics solutions are needed.

Cargo cycles – human powered cycles equipped with freight carrying …

Investigations In Transportation, William G. Becker, Carol Biskupic Knight

TREC Final Reports

The Investigations in Transportation program is an elementary school partnership and curriculum development project that will engage science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals in school-based activities and projects that will bring real-world applications to elementary classrooms for grades 3-5. The Portland Metro STEM Partnership (PMSP) is providing leadership and facilitation to a team of educators from Portland State University, Beaverton School District and Hillsboro School District who will work with volunteers from the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to design, develop, implement and assess the impact of an in-class unit entitled "Investigations in Transportation". This report presents a study …

Do Tods Make A Difference?, Arthur C. Nelson, Matt Miller, Dejan Eskic, Keuntae Kim, Reid Ewing, Jenny H. Liu, Matt Berggren, Zakari Mumuni

TREC Final Reports

In this report, we present research that measures the outcomes of TOD areas in relation to their metropolitan area controls with respect to (1) jobs by sector; (2) housing choice for household types based on key demographic characteristics; (3) housing affordability based on transportation costs; and (4) job-worker balance as a measure of accessibility. Prior literature has not systematically evaluated TOD outcomes in these respects with respect to light rail transit (LRT), commuter rail transit (CRT), bus rapid transit (BRT), and streetcar transit (SCT) systems. Our analysis helps close some of these gaps. We apply our analysis to 23 fixed-guideway …

Three Bridges, Robert Liberty

PSU Transportation Seminars

In the last decade, three important new bridges in the Portland area were the subject of intense discussion and analysis: the Tilikum Crossing, the Sellwood Bridge and the Columbia River Crossing. One of those bridges is completed, the second is under construction and the third one was canceled.

As a Metro Councilor, Robert Liberty was involved in the decision making process for all three projects. The way in which those projects were analyzed and presented to the public revealed to him a great deal about the many weaknesses in the way we make major transportation investment decisions. Those insights are …