News Tagged: Emissions
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Sustainable transportation class at University of Oregon is a success
A new transportation class at the University of Oregon, launched in January 2013 and funded by grants from OTREC and NITC, by all accounts had a wonderful first term.
Conceived as part of the curriculum for the Oregon Leadership in Sustainability (OLIS) program at U of O, the course, titled Sustainable Transportation, will be a permanent part of the OLIS class roster and will be open to all graduate students at the university.
The class this winter, led by instructors Ann Scheerer and Larisa Varela, taught applied research in a real-world setting. Students worked on planning projects for the university and for its home community, the City of Eugene, Ore.
On March 20, 2013, U of O's Transportation and Livability Student Group, LiveMove, hosted a public event where students were invited to present their research and interested community members were invited to attend.
Tags: bicycling, emissions, livemove, marc schlossberg, otrec, university of oregon
Metro grant will assist OTREC researcher in evaluating the use of e-bikes
OTREC research associate John MacArthur, in partnership with Drive Oregon, has been awarded a grant from Metro.
The grant is part of a $2.1 million effort by Metro to improve air quality and community health.
With the Metro grant, Drive Oregon and MacArthur plan to conduct a study of consumer perception and use of electric bicycles, pedal-bikes that provide extra propulsion from a rechargeable battery.
The idea is to see whether having the use of an e-bike will persuade non-bicycle-commuters to use a bike for the “first and last mile” of their daily commute; for example, to get from their workplace to the nearest MAX light rail station.
The e-bikes provided in the study will be foldable for convenient carrying onto the train. Ultimately, the partners of this study hope to increase the percentage of people who commute by bicycle and light rail, thus contributing to overall community health by reducing automobile emissions.
Tags: bicycle, bicycling, drive oregon, electric vehicles, emissions, livability, metro, otrec
Research explores the value of travel-time reliability
When planning their daily commute, most drivers account for the traffic they know is unavoidable: at peak times of day, like morning and afternoon rush hour, they probably allow extra time to get where they’re going.
The delays that are harder to accept are the unexpected ones, when accidents, road work, or a traffic bottleneck turn a thirty minute trip into an hour.
This unpredictable postponement leads to natural frustration on the part of drivers, as it may cause them to be late to work or late picking up children from school. A reliable road network is one in which this is a rare occurrence.
A project led by Portland State University’s Miguel Figliozzi explored the value of this travel-time reliability using a study of commuters’ route choice behavior, taking a look at the trade-offs between reliability, traffic congestion, and air pollution.
The details for the combined project can be found here.
In the first phase of the research, co-investigators David Levinson and Kathleen Harder of the University of Minnesota sought to measure the route choices drivers made in a real-world setting. Instead of just having people fill out a survey about whether they would choose to take major roads or the freeway to work, this study ambitiously placed GPS units in the cars of volunteers, to measure their actual behavior based on factors that arose each day.
They wanted to determine the importance of reliability in commuters’ route choices. If travelers could ensure reaching their destinations in a time-certain manner, the researchers thought, they might be willing to drive on paths with longer travel-times rather than risking the use of paths with shorter travel-times but higher variability.
Tags: alex bigazzi, congestion, emissions, livability, miguel figliozzi, otrec, portland state university
Graduate student takes research to southeast Asia
Graduate student researcher Alex Bigazzi, of Portland State University, will present his work in Vietnam next week.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is hosting a transportation workshop in Ho Chi Minh city. The opportunity for Bigazzi to attend is the result of a spontaneous connection he made recently at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, where he was giving a paper on truck-specific traffic management.
Large trucks contribute a large share of emissions, especially when traveling at a slow crawl through heavy traffic. Bigazzi’s work explores ways to mitigate the effects of this traffic congestion on air quality.
Bigazzi presented two papers at the 54th Annual Transportation Research Forum, which took place March 21-23 in Annapolis. One of them, “The Emissions Benefits of Truck-Only Lane Management,” offers a better understanding of the impacts of congestion on heavy-duty vehicles.
After a question-and-answer exchange, he was invited to present the same research in Vietnam’s largest city.
Tags: alex bigazzi, apec, congestion, emissions, livability, miguel figliozzi, otrec, portland state university
Oregon Tech students bring sustainable paving home
Oregon Tech students boosted their knowledge of sustainable pavement on a conference field trip and brought what they learned back to fellow engineering students on their Klamath Falls campus. Students Jared Jones, Zachary Hudspeth, Michael Eagle and Adam Kershaw attended the Oregon Asphalt Conference in Eugene March 5, sponsored by an OTREC student-support grant. Hudspeth, the ITE Student Chapter president, led the group.
The conference was organized by the Asphalt Pavement Association of Oregon (http://www.apao.org/2013ConfProgram2.htm).
The Oregon Tech students were especially interested in hearing about advances in warm-mix asphalt and RAP (reclaimed asphalt pavement). These two asphalt pavement technologies greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to traditional asphalt paving.
After returning to campus, the students shared their experiences with students enrolled in Oregon Tech’s Civil Engineering 573 Transportation and Land Development class.
Tags: emissions, institute of transportation engineers, oregon institute of technology, oregon tech, roger lindgren, sustainable paving, warm-mix asphalt
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