News Tagged: Modeling
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Transportation students present at first Portland State research symposium
Five OTREC-supported student transportation researchers presented their work Wednesday at Portland State University's first Student Reserach Symposium. Tara Goddard and Katherine Bell presented their work in panel sessions, while Sam Thompson, Patrick Singleton and Oliver Smith presented posters.
Goddard presented her paper, "Are Bicycling and Walking 'Cool'?: Adolescent Attitutes About Active Travel," in the public health and urban studies session. She'll offer an in-depth take on the same topic at noon May 24 for OTREC's Friday transportation seminar. Click here for more information.
Bell's paper, "Evaluation of Smart Phone Weight-Mile Truck Data for Supporting Freight Modeling, Performance Measures and Planning," details some of her work with civil engineering associate professor Miguel Figliozzi. Click here to download a version of the paper.
Thompson's poster was "A Study of Bicycle-Signal Compliance Employing Video Footage;" Singleton's poster was "A Theory of Travel Decision-Making: Applications for Active Travel;" Smith's was "The Effects of Mode Choice on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Portland, Oregon."
The symposium, which organizers expect to become an annual event, featured more than 100 panel presentations and 115 research posters.
Tags: active transportation, katherine bell, modeling, patrick singleton, sam thompson, student research, tara goddard
Bike research leading to smarter regional investments, easier rides
When policymakers look to meet cycling goals by investing in new bicycle routes, they have little research to help them determine whether cyclists will actually use them. As a result, bicycle facilities aren’t considered equally with motor vehicle infrastructure.
That’s changing, thanks in part to OTREC research. An OTREC-funded study, the first to gather large-scale data that reveal cyclists’ actual route preference, is being published in a scientific journal (Transportation Research Part A). The findings have already been incorporated into the regional travel demand model used to make transportation investment decisions across the Portland region.
In the study, Portland State University researchers Joseph Broach, Jennifer Dill and John Gliebe (Gliebe is now with RSG Inc.) outfitted cyclists with GPS units to record which routes they chose and model the choices to reveal preferences. Previous studies have relied on stated preference surveys or less reliable methods of determining cyclists’ actual routes. The data gathering was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its national program Active Living Research.
The research determined not only the attractiveness of bike lanes, paths and bike boulevards, but also the effect of intersection design, turns and slope—factors that proved to be as important as the bike facility itself. While some assume that cyclists take the most direct route to any destination, the research found that cyclists take significant detours to use separated bike paths and bike boulevards. The study is the first to examine bike boulevards, the low-traffic neighborhood streets tailored for cycling.
Some findings are below:
Tags: bicyling, gps, jennifer dill, john gliebe, joseph broach, lane council of governments, metro, modeling, open trip planner, robert wood johnson foundation, route choice, route preference, transportation research part a, travel demand models, trimet
Modeling series gives tools for better policy, understanding of decisions
With transportation models increasingly used to inform policy decisions at all levels, OTREC is pleased to offer a free educational series designed to help decision makers, transportation officials and others understand these important tools. The series was organized with OTREC’s Oregon Modeling Collaborative and presented during the weekly transportation seminars at Portland State University’s Center for Transportation Studies.
Archived video of the entire eight-week series is now available. Each seminar lasts one hour. Click here for a description of each seminar and links to the video.
While the Friday seminar series has showcased transportation issues for years, the modeling series marks the first time that eight seminars focused on a single theme. Modeling is a timely topic, as policy makers come to rely increasingly on models, whether or not they have a background in modeling.
The series demonstrates how modeling can support better decision-making and explains the tools and the process to a nontechnical audience, said Kelly Clifton, director of the Oregon Modeling Collaborative. Oregon’s discussions regarding modeling tools have helped inform the national discussion, she said.
The final seminar in the series recapped some of the earlier lessons and pointed out some of the challenges for the future of modeling. No single model will meet everyone’s needs, Clifton said.
“There’s more than one tool,” she said. “We’ll need more flexible models that are quick to run lots of scenarios.”
Click here to learn more.
Tags: climate modeling, kelly clifton, land-use modeling, modeling, oregon modeling collaborative, oregon modeling steering committee, otrec, transportation modeling, transportation seminar series
Special seminar series opens with practical advice on transportation modeling
Transportation models keep growing more sophisticated. But complicated isn’t necessarily better, Rick Donnelly said during the inaugural seminar in OTREC’s spring 2012 transportation seminar series April 6.
“Better is contextual,” Donnelly said.
Donnelly, who leads the modeling and simulation practice at engineering consultancy Parsons Brinckerhoff, opened the spring seminar series with an introduction to models. Seven more free seminars follow in the series, produced in partnership with the Oregon Modeling Collaborative.
Donnelly detailed questions that model builders and users should ask and offered his thoughts on building more useful and informative models. Click here for a link to the archived presentation.
Although transportation models consider increasingly more information, simpler models can often get the job done with a smaller investment of time and money, Donnelly said. Sometimes the simplest approach actually produces the best results.
“’Better’ is only relevant in the context of what the model is going to be used for,” he said.
The modeling series continues Friday, April 13 with another seminar geared toward non-modelers. The seminar, by Ben Stabler, also of Parsons Brinckerhoff, builds on Donnelly’s opening installment.
Stabler will discuss two approaches to travel modeling and give examples of each approach. Click here for more details on Stabler’s talk and a link to the live Webcast.
All seminars in the series are free and run from noon to 1 p.m. Fridays at Portland State University’s Urban Center, Southwest Sixth Avenue and Mill Street, Room 204. Each seminar is Webcast live and archived after the fact.
More information on the series, including links to live and archived presentations, is at http://theotrec.org/events.
Tags: modeling, models, oregon modeling collaborative, otrec, parsons brinckerhoff, rick donnelly, transportation modeling, transportation models
News from TRB: Making trip-generation models work for urban transportation
Planners looking to develop an dense mix of urban land uses often face a dilemma: they’re using trip-generation models that undercount the very trips on bicycle and foot that the planners encourage while paving the way for more driving.
Portland State University Associate Professor Kelly Clifton dove into the topic Monday, presenting a paper at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington D.C. Kristina Currans of PSU, April Cutter of Metro, and Robert Schneider of the University of California Berkeley are coauthors.
Clifton and other panelists agreed that the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ trip generation rates don’t adequately reflect actual trips in an urban area with multiple land uses and transportation modes. They differed on the remedy, however.
Presenting another paper, Associate Professor Kevan Shafizadeh of California State University Sacramento, evaluated and tested several complex methods, finding that none truly suits smart-growth development projects. However, Shafizadeh and his team found that every method tested does a better job at predicting the number of trips generated than the ITE rates.
We need to predict trips better, Clifton said, but perhaps a simpler solution exists. She acknowledged Shafizadeh’s conclusions that each alternative also had deficiencies in certain applications, and suggested that the ITE rates could be tweaked instead of scrapped entirely.
Tags: april cutter, kelly clifton, kristina currans, modeling, robert schneider, transportation research board, trip-generation rates
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