News From University: OSU - OTREC - Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium

Research finds medians make driveways safer

Posted on August 17, 2014

An OTREC report from Oregon State University looked at various center median and bicycle lane configurations, and how they affect traffic at road access points.

In the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) publication A Policy on Geometric Design of Highways and Streets, commonly known as the Green Book, access points include the intersections of public roads as well as driveway locations. In the Green Book, most of the supporting research for the spacing of driveways is based on standard highway design procedures. They include simple human factors and geometric principles, and have not been thoroughly evaluated based on a variety of road cross section configurations.

Principal investigator Karen Dixon of Oregon State University sought to close this research gap by evaluating the influences of select cross-sectional-related design elements, specifically median configurations and bicycle lanes, on driveways.

NITC program awards funding for new round of research, education projects

Posted on July 8, 2014

The executive committee of the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, or NITC, program has selected a third round of research, education, and technology transfer projects for funding. This grant is part of the University Transportation Center (UTC) program funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Research and Technology, and is a partnership between Portland State University, the University of Oregon, the Oregon Institute of Technology, and the University of Utah. The committee chose eight projects, totaling $800,000, under the NITC theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation to foster livable communities.

The projects are national in scope and support innovations in priority areas including public transit and active transportation.

Projects selected include:

An analysis of the effects of commuter rail on population deconcentration.
A look into prioritizing pedestrians at signalized intersections.
A study of cyclist-vehicle interaction.
An evaluation of an eco-driving intervention.

The eight projects were chosen from among 20 proposals with a total request of over $2 million.

A complete list of projects and principal investigators is below:

Safety thread runs through sixth Oregon Transportation Summit

Posted on July 8, 2014

What is the highest number of deaths and serious injuries we should accept from our transportation system? For transportation agencies who have long sought to reduce traffic fatalities, a movement to eliminate them completely has gained currency.

This year’s Oregon Transportation Summit brings a strong safety theme, including plenary session and morning and afternoon workshops. Registration for the summit officially opens today.

Register or learn more about the summit, which takes place Monday, Sept. 15.

The 2014 Oregon Transportation Summit opens with a plenary session titled “Envisioning Vision Zero.” Vision Zero is the approach, initiated in Sweden, to not accept deaths or serious injuries as a tradeoff for other goals of the road network. In the United States, a national effort called Toward Zero Deaths grew out of these principles.

Minnesota Toward Zero Deaths has been a leader among state programs, working with partners across jurisdictions and service categories across the state to address roadway deaths and injuries. Sue Groth oversees this effort as the state traffic engineer and director of the Office of Traffic, Safety and Technology for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

OTREC is pleased to have Groth deliver the summit’s plenary address. Groth will give context on Toward Zero Deaths and describe how this philosophy now guides her department. Alongside Minnesota, Oregon has also identified zero transportation deaths as a core objective in its strategic highway safety plan. The Oregon Department of Transportation’s Safety Division Administrator Troy Costales will follow Groth’s presentation with a response focused on Oregon’s efforts.

Biographies for Groth, Costales and other speakers are at the OTS Speaker Biographies Page.

OTREC research revitalizes transportation curriculum

Posted on February 5, 2014

OTREC research is helping change the face of transportation education.

Across the country, at the undergraduate level, universities typically offer an introductory transportation engineering course as part of a civil engineering program.

David Hurwitz of Oregon State University is one of several educators interested in renovating this intro course. In this OTREC research project, Hurwitz helped develop some activity-based learning modules to introduce students to transportation concepts. He points out it is the first time many undergraduate engineering students are exposed to transportation, and therefore, the perfect time to get their attention.

Hurwitz is a founding member of the National Transportation Curriculum Project (NTCP), an organization of approximately ten faculty members, at different universities around the country, that have been collaborating since 2009. The NTCP helped Hurwitz write a National Science Foundation grant to help fund this research project.

“This project stemmed from the recognition that we wanted to try and facilitate change in the way that we teach transportation engineering at the collegiate level, across the country,” Hurwitz said.

The main focus of the course renovation is to move toward activity-based learning, rather than a traditional classroom/lecture environment.

Looking back at OTREC by the numbers

Posted on December 13, 2013

As we prepare for the next step in our development as a center, we're taking a look back at the seven years since OTREC's founding:

The Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, or OTREC, was founded in 2006 with a theme that emphasized advanced technology, the integration of transportation and land use, and healthy communities. OTREC’s mission is to inform transportation decision making through timely, useful primary research and to build the capacity of the transportation workforce.

Reflecting the DOT mission, OTREC promotes choices that make our transportation system safe, resilient and adaptable. Providing access to travel options that promote the health of our communities and our environment makes our country stronger.

From the research that makes our communities living laboratories to the innovative education and technology transfer efforts that wed research and practice, our programs lay the groundwork for livable communities. Our advanced technology projects have shown the effect of traffic-signal timing on pedestrians’ exposure to pollution and helped a state Department of Transportation place sensors to best estimate travel times for the least cost. Our healthy communities projects have helped shape national guidelines for bike boxes and helped improve safety at intersections using the flashing-yellow-arrow traffic signal. Projects under our integration of transportation and land use theme have shown how agencies can retrofit suburban land uses for active transportation and helped adjust Institute of Transportation Engineers trip-generations rates for dense, multimodal sites.

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News: Oregon State University

Research finds medians make driveways safer

NITC program awards funding for new round of research, education projects

Safety thread runs through sixth Oregon Transportation Summit

OTREC research revitalizes transportation curriculum

Looking back at OTREC by the numbers

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