OTREC Newsletter Winter 2014

PSU awarded $2.83 million as U.S. DOT center for livable communities

 

Portland State University’s transportation research and education center has earned a $2.83 million federal grant to expand the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, or NITC, a program of OTREC at Portland State. The grant marks the center’s designation as the U.S. Department of Transportation’s national university transportation center for livable communities.

 

The grant enables the NITC program to include a new partner, the University of South Florida. With leadership and administration from Portland State, the NITC program also taps the research capacity of the University of Oregon, the Oregon Institute of Technology and the University of Utah. Read more...

 

 

Research details best practices for relocating the homeless

 

OTREC researchers at Portland State University helped Department of Transportation staff members face a problem that might not be in their job description: how best to deal with homeless individuals and households who may be living in DOT rights-of-way and rest areas.

 

As owners of some of the largest stretches of public land, DOTs have to maintain the land for public use, but may lack resources to address the social welfare aspects of the stewardship of public land.  Read more...

 

OTREC research takes closer look at bus safety

 

While public transit is generally safer than personal travel, not all transit modes are created equal: compared with other forms of transit, buses have a higher safety incident rate.

 

When TriMet, the Portland, Ore., region’s transit provider, added a survey of operator perceptions of safety risks to its training, investigators James Strathman and Sung-Moon Kwon, of Portland State University, explored those survey results to find sources of safety risk in bus operations. Read more...

 

Research takes wholistic approach to traffic signal optimization

 

An OTREC project took an in-depth look at the travel-time and health-related effects of a new implementation of an adaptive traffic system.

Southeast Powell Boulevard is a multimodal urban corridor connecting  U.S. Highway 26 through Portland, Ore. The corridor is highly congested during morning and evening peak traffic hours. In October 2011, an adaptive traffic system called SCATS was deployed. Read more...

 

Project explores contextual influences on trip generation

 

A project headed by Kelly Clifton of Portland State University examines the ways in which urban context affects vehicle trip-generation rates across a variety of land uses.

 

Results from this study reveal a trend: For all land uses tested, vehicle-trip rates decrease as neighborhood types become more urban. Read more ...

 

OTREC deploys e-bikes to explore growing travel option

 

Even as Portland racks up bike-friendly honors, research at Portland State University is shedding light on a travel option that promises to get even more people on two wheels. Electric-assist bikes, or e-bikes, could hold the key to increasing cycling, particularly among women, older adults and people with physical limitations.

 

Researchers Jennifer Dill and John MacArthur are exploring perceptions and attitudes toward e-bikes and evaluating their use to see if these bikes encourage new cyclists. They’re loaning out locally made, GPS-equipped e-bikes to 120 people to learn about their actual experience using the bikes, marking the first such research in the country. Read more...

 

NITC program awards nearly $1 million for research, education projects

 

OTREC selected a new roster of projects for funding under the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, or NITC, program. The program’s executive committee chose 10 projects, totaling $900,000, under the NITC theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation to foster livable communities.

The projects are national in scope and reflect priority areas including transit supply and outcomes, and pedestrian and bicyclist behavior. Read more ...