News Tagged: Nitc
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NITC dissertation fellow Susan Petheram explores land use in Utah
Susan Petheram, a Ph.D. candidate in the Metropolitan Planning, Policy, & Design program at the University of Utah, has recently been awarded a NITC dissertation fellowship.
NITC fellowships are awarded to fund research on surface transportation topics that fit under the NITC theme of safe, healthy, and sustainable transportation choices to foster livable communities. Petheram's research focuses on the integration of transportation and land use, and on building healthy communities through transit access.
Her dissertation research involves evaluating some of the effects of the light rail system in Salt Lake County. Scarcely more than a decade old, the TRAX light rail system has three lines in service as of 2013, and some of the transportation researchers at the University of Utah are taking advantage of this living laboratory to explore the effects of a light rail system upon the neighborhoods and suburbs that it serves.
Calvin Tribby, for example, another NTIC fellow from the University of Utah, is observing the new transit opportunities' effect on public health. Petheram's research focuses on a different angle: the light rail's effect on property values.
In particular, she is interested in finding out whether positive effects on property values will extend beyond the traditional "half-mile circle" used in transit-oriented development (TOD) planning. A half-mile is generally estimated to be the furthest a commuter would be willing to walk to get to a transit stop.
Tags: infrastructure, land use, nitc, research, university of utah
Utah doctoral candidate Calvin Tribby becomes NITC research fellow
Calvin Tribby, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, was recently awarded one of NITC's 2013 dissertation fellowships.
Tags: active transportation, fellowship, nitc, research, university of utah
NITC dissertation fellow Gail Meakins will research healthy communities
The 2013 NITC dissertation fellowships have been awarded, and Gail Meakins, of the University of Utah, has been selected for a $7,500 NITC fellowship to support her dissertation research.
Meakins's Ph.D. program of study combines her two fields of interest by studying the connection between the built environment and public health.
A former athletic director, Meakins made a major career change in 2008 to go back to school and study Urban Planning.
"My lifelong passion for, and interest in, physical activity and sport began at a very early age," she said. Always a competitive swimmer and runner, she became intrigued with city design over time.
After earning her Bachelor's and Master's of Arts in Physical Education from the University of California, Berkeley in the mid-1970's, Meakins worked for over 20 years in physical education and health at the middle school, high school, and collegiate level.
"Throughout the years I have had the opportunity to travel extensively, and developed a strong interest in both urban design and architecture," Meakins said. In the course of her travels, she couldn't help but notice wide differences between neighborhoods, in terms of the availability of active travel modes.
Her research focuses on the relationship between where we live and the level of physical health we enjoy.
Tags: healthy communities, nitc, research, university of utah
OTREC research featured at Transportation Research Board national conference
A total of 133 researchers from OTREC campuses will have their work featured at the Transportation Research Board national conference the week of Jan. 13 in Washington, D.C. Seventy-two separate sessions will feature research from Portland State University, the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and the University of Utah.
The weeklong conference is the event of the year for transportation researchers across the country and an important opportunity for students and faculty to share research results, learn best practices and network.
As OTREC prides itself on developing the next generation of the transportation workforce, students are well represented at the conference. Nearly 50 students will have their research presented at lectern or poster sessions and many of those students are the lead authors of papers accepted for the conference.
Portland State University alone is sending 30 graduate and undergraduate students to the conference. Katherine Bell, a Portland state graduate student, will present research at a freight planning and logistics session on Monday. Bell worked with Miguel Figliozzi of Portland State’s civil and environmental engineering department on an OTREC research project that could mark a sea change in how freight data is collected and used.
Oregon is one of a few states to collect a tax on heavy trucks based on their weight and miles driven. In 2010, The Oregon Department of Transportation started a pilot project to automate and simplify this tax collection using a smart-phone app. Although the Truck Road Use Electronics, or TRUE, system was designed for tax purposes, the data collected can support a staggering array of other uses.
Bell and Figliozzi found that if TRUE or a system like it were implemented statewide it would supply enough data to develop highly accurate trip generation rates, mobility measures and performance measure categories such as safety, accessibility and connectivity, system condition, and environmental stewardship.
The conference paper details some of those potential uses. “The first stages of this research are a master plan on what can be done if this data becomes more widely available,” Bell said.
Tags: chris muhs, katherine bell, miguel figliozzi, nitc, otrec, steve gehrke, transportation research board
NITC program awards nearly $2 million for first round of research, education projects
OTREC has selected its first roster of projects under the new National Institute for Transportation and Communities, or NITC, program. The program’s executive committee chose 19 projects, totaling $1.97 million, under the NITC theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation to foster livable communities.
The projects have national implications and reflect priority areas including public health, equity and transit. True to the program’s multidisciplinary nature, projects extend beyond transportation engineering and planning to include sociology, chemistry, economics and more—10 disciplines in all.
While Portland State University, the University of Oregon and the Oregon Institute of Technology have participated in previous OTREC funding cycles, the new slate of projects marks the addition of the University of Utah into the consortium. Four projects will be led by University of Utah investigators.
Projects selected include:
- An assessment of the safety, operations, economic impacts, user experience and perceptions of protected bikeways in six disparate cities across the United States. This project is part of the Green Lane Project of the Bikes Belong Foundation.
- An analysis of how light-rail transit affects other traffic, including a quantification of the savings in time, pollution and parking that transit subsidies provide.
- A look into bicyclists’ exposure to different types of traffic-related air pollution and how much pollution cyclists breathe when traveling in bike lanes, cycle tracks and bike boulevards.
- An evaluation of the social equity effects of transit-fare policy. As Utah Transit Authority considers a shift from a flat-rate to distance-based fare structure, this project will consider the equity implications.
- A comparison of the equity effects of three transit oriented developments in low-income Latino communities. The project will examine how such developments affect economic development, community involvement and agency.
- A research project to determine people’s perceptions of electric-assist bicycles and determine the potential of these bicycles to encourage new cyclists.
- A project to create a guidebook for transportation planners and engineers to retrofit existing streets based on complete streets principles. The reference guide will draw upon improvements implemented around the country to make streets serve all users.
The projects were chosen from among 42 proposals with a total request of nearly $4.7 million. Of the project selected, 15 are research projects, including two focusing on research data; three are education projects, including one focused on citizen engagement; and one is a technology transfer project.
Ten projects span multiple disciplines and 15 involve multiple investigators, with 37 investigators funded in all. Seven untenured tenure-track faculty members will lead projects, with an additional three serving as co-investigators.
A complete list of projects and principal investigators is below:
Tags: bicycle infrastructure, complete streets, cycle tracks, e-bikes, green lanes, light rail, national institute for transportation and communities, nitc, otrec, traffic-related pollution, transit, transit equity, transportation safety, university of utah, utah transit authority, walking
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