News: Research

Joseph Broach and Arlie Adkins Selected for OTREC Dissertation Fellowships

Posted on October 30, 2012 in Research

Postdoctoral candidates Joseph Broach and Arlie Adkins (both at Portland State University) were recently awarded $15,000 fellowships to assist them in completing their dissertation research. They were awarded the fellowships through an open and competitive process available to PhD candidates at Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Oregon Tech, Portland State University and the University of Utah.

Joseph's research will explore a travel mode choice framework incorporating realistic bike and walk routes. His research will consider a more complete mode choice behavioral framework that acknowledges the importance of attributes along the specific walk and bike routes that travelers are likely to consider. The proposed framework will then be applied to revealed preference travel datasets collected in Portland, Oregon. Measurement of nonmotorized trip distance/time, built environment, trip/tour, and attitude attributes as well as mode availability and model structure will be addressed explicitly. Route and mode choice models will be specified using discrete choice techniques.

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Tags: arlie adkins, dissertation, fellowships, iss, joe broach

Researcher helping Oregon’s transportation network withstand quake like Japan’s

Posted on March 22, 2011 in Research

As a student at the University of British Columbia, Peter Dusicka pursued earthquake engineering in part because so few others had taken that path. “I was looking for a way to make a difference and looking for areas within civil engineering that seemed immature,” Dusicka said.

There was too much guesswork as to how well the Pacific Northwest’s transportation network would handle the type of subduction zone earthquakes the region is prone to. Now, thanks in part to Dusicka’s research, we know a lot more.

When it comes to the fragility of Oregon’s transportation system, the recent earthquakes around the Pacific Rim provide more insight into a major quake than do models developed for North America, said Dusicka an OTREC researcher and Portland State University associate professor. “The subduction zone earthquake in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia isn’t a threat anywhere else in the U.S.,” he said.

The recent Japanese quake as well as the one in Chile—both subduction-zone quakes—are more instructive. Subduction-zone quakes tend to be larger magnitude, shake longer and affect a larger geographic area than other earthquakes.

The serious earthquake related damage in Japan probably would have been worse had that country’s leaders not been spurred by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. “The Japanese people and government learned quite a bit from that event and reacted strongly,” Dusicka said.

“They’ve made significant investments in earthquake research. They have some of the newest facilities. The largest shake table in the world is there as a result.”

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Tags: bridge damage models, bridges, earthquake engineering, earthquakes, peter dusicka, seismic, subduction zone

TRB, In Case You Missed It

Posted on February 25, 2011 in Events | Research

If you weren’t one of the 10,000 people who attended the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Meeting in January, there are fifty students and twenty faculty for PSU, UO, OSU and OIT who can tell you what they learned there.  OTREC's bright yellow lanyards made our presence especially visible! PSU student Brian Davis blogged about his experience, OTREC’s Jon Makler was interviewed in a local newspaper, and the Oregon “delegation” at the conference was covered by both local and national blogs. Team OTREC filed some daily debriefs, highlighting presentations on topics such as federal stimulus investments in Los Angeles and Vermont’s efforts to address their transportation workforce crisis with returning military veterans (as well as the snow storm that affected the conference’s last day).

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Tags: connected vehicles, data, intelligent transportation systems, peter appel, rita, robert bertini, transportation research board

Report explores the end of the freeway era

Posted on January 11, 2011 in Research

Decades after the completion of most interstate freeways, many transportation authorities have turned their attention to expanding existing freeways. A new OTREC research report examines the consequences for American urban areas if all freeway expansion stopped.

Titled “No More Freeways,” the report concludes that investing in arterial streets instead of expanding freeways provides the greatest social benefit for the cost. Doing so distributes roadway capacity throughout the area instead of concentrating it on freeway corridors.

The “no-more-freeway” policy helps distribute jobs and housing throughout the urban area and makes it easier to get around, principal investigator Lei Zhang found. Zhang modeled various transportation alternatives for both a hypothetical urban area and a real-world system: Minneapolis-St. Paul.

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Tags: freeway expansion, lei zhang, minneapolis, toll roads, tolls, twin cities

OTREC Pre-Solicitation Notice

Posted on December 15, 2010 in Research

OTREC is releasing this pre-solicitation notice to help potential Principal Investigators (PIs) and researchers plan for their proposal submittal in the upcoming year.  If you have any questions, please contact Hau Hagedorn at [email protected]. Some specifics relating to the next RFP include:

• PIs will have 9 weeks for developing proposals.
• PIs are to submit a brief (1-2 paragraphs) proposal description by Feb 25 to help assist in identifying peer reviewers. The quicker topical areas can be identified, the more efficient the peer review process.
• Current PIs who are interested in submitting a proposal are expected to turn in all outstanding reports and products by Mar 31. OTREC will not accept proposals from PIs with outstanding reports and/or products. That is, if a PI submits a proposal and does not turn in their deliverables by Mar 31, we will not send their proposals out for peer review.
• New for this year, PIs with projects with an end date of on or before Sep. 30, 2010 will need to submit their match documentation. OTREC staff will follow up with PIs individually.

Tags: rfp

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