NITC program awards nearly $1 million for research, education projects

The NITC program's executive committee has selected a new roster of projects for funding under the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, or NITC, program. The committee chose 10 projects, totaling $900,000, under the NITC theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation to foster livable communities.

The projects are national in scope and reflect priority areas including transit supply and outcomes, and pedestrian and bicyclist behavior. 

Projects selected include:

• A bicycle and pedestrian miles traveled project for Washington state.
• A study that measures the effectiveness on social media on advancing public transit.
• A look into crowdsourcing the collection of data on transportation behavior.
• A national study of Bus Rapid Transit outcomes.

A complete list of projects and principal investigators is below:

1. National Study of BRT Development Outcomes: Arthur Nelson and Joanna Ganning, University of Utah
2. Crowdsourcing the Collection of Transportation Behavior Data: Christopher Bone, Ken Kato and Marc Schlossberg, University of Oregon
3. Measuring the Impacts of Social Media on Advancing Public Transit: Jenny Liu, Portland State University and Xuegang (Jeff) Ban, Rensselaer Polytechnic Insitute
4. Connecting People to Places: Spaciotemporal Analysis of Transit Supply Using Travel-Time Cubes: Steven Farber, UU
5. Understanding Types of Cyclists Nationally: Jennifer Dill and Nathan McNeil, PSU
6. Development of a Pedestrian Demand Estimation Tool: Kelly Clifton, PSU
7. Investigations in Transportation: William Becker and Melissa Dubois, PSU
8. Agent-Based Model Simulating Pedestrian Behavioral Response to Environmental Structural Changes: Amy Lobben and Christopher Bone, UO
9. Is HUD Affordable Housing Really Affordable?: Reid Ewing, UU
10. Washington State Pedestrian and Bicycle Miles Traveled Project: Krista Nordback, PSU

The first round of NITC funded projects are here.

OTREC and the NITC program are funded by the University Transportation Centers program of U.S. DOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration. Project partners and sponsors include Bikes Belong, city of Portland, Conscious Consumer, Drive Oregon, Institute for Sustainable Solutions, Intel, KersTech Vehicle Systems, Mountainlands Association of Governments, Metro, Oregon Department of Transportation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Salt Lake County, TriMet, Utah Transit Authority and Wasatch Front Regional Council.

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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