OTREC *News

NITC researchers release Complete Streets design guide

2014-10-06T17:47:24+00:00

NITC researchers have created a design manual to aid traffic engineers, transportation planners, elected officials, businesses and community stakeholders in re-envisioning their streets.

Traditionally, road design in the U.S. has been based on the simple principle of moving as many cars as possible.

The Complete Streets movement, a new way of approaching street design, is gaining ground as planners and engineers work to build road networks that are safer, more livable and can accomodate all modes of transportation.

The philosophy behind Complete Streets is that a street, in addition to being a means of reaching destinations, is also a "place" in its own right and should feel comfortable and welcoming for pedestrians and bicyclists.

To inform and encourage Complete Street redesigns, principal investigator Marc Schlossberg and co-investigator John Rowell, of the University of Oregon, put together an evidence-based design guide featuring 25 Complete Streets from around the country.

Complete Streets policies are being adopted all across the United States, but local officials have few documented guidebooks to help them think about how to retrofit streets based on best practices. This project’s aim was to fill this gap, making it easier for communities to use the evidence from other communities when making decisions about retrofitting their streets.

Click here to download the full-color manual, or request a copy.

Along with photographs documenting the context and before-and-after appearance of the redesigned streets, the manual provides data about collisions, economic factors, annual average daily traffic (AADT) and mode choices.

The Complete Streets movement emphasizes placemaking and a sense of shared public space. There is no single strategy; rather, designers can implement multiple strategies based on a street’s context and a project’s goals.

Many Complete Street transformations include a “road diet,” in which a four-lane road with no median or bike lanes is turned into a two-lane road (one lane in each direction), a center turn median, and two bike lanes.

Removing two automobile travel lanes may seem like it would reduce automobile throughput, but the increased flow achieved with left-turning vehicles using the center median can actually maintain or improve upon previous throughput numbers.

Other strategies often include the addition of bicycle lanes and the enrichment of pedestrian infrastructure. Additional streetscape elements like street furniture, trees and parked cars effectively slow down traffic and make the street a more pleasant place.

Some highlights from the guide:

Cycling

Cycling increased 325 percent on South Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans after the city rebuilt the road (damaged and flooded by Hurricane Katrina) and added a bicycle lane.

Safety

Pedestrian collisions at crossings were reduced 80 percent thanks to improved crosswalks at Stone Way N. in Seattle, Washington. On Nebraska Avenue in Tampa, Florida, crashed dropped by 68 percent and bicyclists reported feeling safer on the street.

Placemaking

East Boulevard in Charlotte, North Carolina now supports a cafe culture: residents and business owners wanted more outdoor dining options, and a greater separation between sidewalks and cars reduced traffic noises and facilitated al fresco dining.

Retail

Shoreline, Washington saw commerce improve along its redesigned Aurora Avenue: the city kept track of sales receipts along the corridor during the two years of construction and found a 2.9 percent dip in sales the first year followed by a 9.1 percent increase the second year.

When selecting sites for the manual, Schlossberg and Rowell consulted with the directors of the National Complete Streets Coalition, the League of American Bicyclists and the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, who offered guidance as to what content they thought would be most useful to their national constituencies of transportation professionals.

In addition, the research team engaged engineers and designers from local and state government and the private sector who had been involved with similar street retrofit projects.

The NITC researchers chose to focus on fairly typical streets. There have been notable projects around the country where very substantial street changes have taken place (for example, turning Times Square into a pedestrian mall), but the focus of this project was to find examples that many communities of different sizes, locations, and political tendencies could learn from.

For more information, visit the project page or download the NITC final report.

Workshop participants will cycle down Portland’s best trails

2014-09-28T00:00:13+00:00

The Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) is teaming up with Alta Planning + Design to offer a firsthand, on-the-ground training opportunity at the end of October.

They will teach a trail design course at Portland State University, with field tours of some of Portland's biggest trail challenges and best solutions.

Course instructors are Alta associates Robin Wilcox, George Hudson, and Karen Vitkay. They will share their experience and provide examples from some of the best trails around the country.

Multi-use trails, not accessible by car but meant to be shared by pedestrians, cyclists and the occasional leashed dog, are pleasant routes by almost anyone’s standards. Often winding through wooded areas or along waterways, insulated from the noise of traffic and offering contact with nature, they present an attractive alternative to cyclists who are not as comfortable riding on busy streets.

While any segment of trail can offer a pleasant stroll, the true beauty of shared-use trails lies in being able to use them: as an alternate, off-street means of travel, a route to school or a way to get to work in the morning. A widespread switch from driving on streets to walking or cycling on trails has the potential to change communities by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing physical activity, and sharpening our well-being.

Yet it is a challenge to create a network of trails that is connected and functional enough to be able to serve as a commute route for a significant number of people.

Portland, Oregon’s 79 miles of off-street bike paths were instrumental in allowing Portland to retain its usual spot in the top five bike cities in Bicycling Magazine’s 2014 ranking, and to become the only large city in the nation awarded Platinum status by the League of American Bicyclists.

That is also what makes Portland State University the ideal setting for this workshop experience.

The field tours, on bicycle (rental will be available for those who do not have bikes or who will be traveling without theirs), will take participants beside the highway along the surprisingly peaceful I-205 path, which connects east Portland’s neighborhoods to the light rail system and to the Columbia River Gorge. The class will also bike along the Springwater Corridor as it connects through neighborhood greenways, and down the floating walkway of the Eastbank Esplanade, which follows the east bank of the Willamette River.

Professionals who are engaged in planning, designing or advocating for bicycle and pedestrian networks at the community or regional level are invited to attend the one-and-a-half-day course, eligible for 9 hours of professional development. The course is also open to engineering and planning students.

While IBPI’s popular week-long Comprehensive Bicycle Design and Engineering courses usually touch on some aspects of trail design, this workshop will focus on the particulars: trail widths, surfacing, road crossings, trail types, sustainable infrastructure and more.

Participants are encouraged to bring examples of trail challenges they are currently facing in their communities. Those who are tackling trail gaps, difficult crossings, or challenging connections to the on-street network can draw on the expertise of course instructors and fellow students, working as a group to examine issues, find precedents, and sketch out potential solutions.

For more information or to register for this workshop, visit the course page here.

NITC Fall 2014 doctoral dissertation fellowship applications due October 31st

2014-09-14T15:42:38+00:00

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) invites proposals for the Fall 2014 Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowships. This grant is part of the University Transportation Center (UTC) program funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT), and is a partnership between Portland State University (PSU), the University of Oregon (UO), the Oregon Institute of Technology (Oregon Tech), and the University of Utah (UU). The mission of the UTC program is to advance U.S. technology and expertise in the many disciplines comprising transportation through the mechanisms of education, research, and technology transfer at university-based centers. See utc.dot.gov for more information.

Fellowships up to $15,000 will be awarded to cover expenses for the recipient while working on their dissertation. A Spring 2015 NITC Dissertation RFP will be released in January with applications due in April 2015.

NITC is focused on contributing to transportation projects that support innovations in: livability, incorporating safety and environmental sustainability

ELIGIBILITY

Students must be a US Citizen and have advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree prior to the application deadline. NITC fellowships are open to students currently enrolled in a transportation-related doctoral program at Portland State University (PSU), University of Oregon (UO), Oregon Institute of Technology (Oregon Tech), or the University of Utah (UU).

PROCESS

Applicants must submit their application form to the online proposal system by October 31st, 2014 to qualify for funding. Additionally, a copy of the dissertation must be submitted to Susan Peithman when complete. Successful applicants should intend to complete their dissertation by December 31, 2015. If you have questions about your application process, please contact Susan Peithman ([email protected]). More information can be foundby downloading the application here: NITC Dissertation Application.

Abundant access: Jarrett Walker on freedom through transit

2014-09-09T21:23:41+00:00

With his 2011 book, “Human Transit,” consultant Jarrett Walker provided planners and community members with a new way to think about the choices transit planning requires. Since that time, Walker has focused on what transit actually delivers. He calls this concept “abundant access”: how much of your city is available to you in a short amount of time.

Walker will delve into this topic Monday, Sept. 15 as the keynote speaker at the Oregon Transportation Summit. Online registration for the summit closes Wednesday night.

“Abundant access is an interesting way to think about transit and something that brings it into the personal frame of liberty that is missing from most analysis of urban outcomes,” Walker said. “How we talk about sensations of freedom, so that we don’t just sound like bureaucrats who know what’s good for everyone.”

Urbanist leaders go astray, Walker said, when they put other goals ahead of the liberty and opportunity that useful transit provides. That could mean catering to developers or creating a symbolic transit system that is fun to ride but doesn’t serve regular transit users well.

Walker calls the New Urbanist conceit of prioritizing an aesthetically pleasing transit system over getting to destinations quickly as “a glorification of slowness” and an “inherently aristocratic idea.” For example, measuring the "perception of time," as though it were more important than actual time presumes the viewpoint of a person of relative leisure, not someone who faces penalties for being late.

“If you work at McDonalds, you can’t say ‘I’m not really late for work because my perception of time is that I got here 10 minutes ago,’ ” Walker said.

Transit systems do best by catering to the lower-income riders first and expanding service incrementally from there, so it becomes progressively more useful to a wider range of people, he said. The social, environmental, land use and congestion benefits of transit accrue to a well-running system, not necessarily a sexy one.

Streetcars in mixed traffic, including Portland’s, come in for specific criticism as a product of what Walker calls transit tourism. “Everyone in this conversation has been to Strasbourg or Bordeaux and seen these cool European streetcars and want that for their city,” Walker said. Ignoring factors such as frequency, dedicated rights-of-way and route planning, however, renders the streetcar itself a mere symbol of its European counterparts.

“We’re making our community look like Strasbourg or Bordeaux instead of making it function like them.”

Transit planners have to respect the perspective of lower-income people, Walker said, even if decision makers take longer to come around. But the idea that politicians won’t get public support unless they cater to developers is losing currency.

“I don’t believe those are the politics anymore,” Walker said. “Maybe they are the politics of the fortunate, but they’re not really the conversations among ordinary people anymore.”

He points out a January poll of Portland residents showing more than twice the support for expanded frequent bus service than streetcar expansion. “I think that goes to the fact that people are figuring out that utility is actually what matters.”

E-Bike laws create widely differing situations for users

2014-08-28T12:45:04+00:00

In 2009, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed the Copenhagen Wheel, a device that converts an ordinary bicycle into a hybrid e-bike.

An e-bike is considered a motorized bicycle under Massachusetts law. This means that once the 13-pound, 26-inch Copenhagen Wheel is attached to the rear wheel of a bicycle, the resulting vehicle requires a driver’s license to operate, must be registered with the DMV, and its rider must wear, not just a bike helmet, but a motorcycle helmet to be in compliance with the law.

Electric bicycles, or e-bikes, are well established in China and other Asian and European countries but market adoption has been slow in the United States.

Part of the reason could be that the law is often nebulous where e-bikes are concerned.

NITC researchers at Portland State University conducted a policy review revealing the current state of legislation regarding e-bikes in the United States and Canada.

The report, Regulations of E-Bikes in North America, provides a summary of legal definitions and requirements surrounding the use of electric-assist bicycles in each of the 50 states, Washington D.C. and 13 Canadian provinces.

No two jurisdictions are exactly alike in their legal treatment of this relatively new mode of transportation.

John MacArthur, the leader of PSU’s e-bike research program, co-authored the report with graduate research assistant and fellow e-bike researcher Nick Kobel of Portland State University. MacArthur and Kobel outline the different classifications of e-bikes—scooter-style, bicycle-style, throttle or pedal assist—and explore potential conflicts that some of the regulations may cause for the adoption of this technology.

MacArthur believes that the e-bike has the potential to get more people out of their cars and biking, as the electric propulsion assistance makes it easier to overcome hills and long distances. This paper is part of a larger project in which MacArthur and Jennifer Dill are evaluating e-bike use by putting Kaiser Permanente employees on e-bikes.

Surveyed users of e-bikes report that the power boost helps them arrive less tired and sweaty at their destination, making it a more comfortable commute option. Legal requirements like wearing a helmet, registering the vehicle, getting a license to operate it, and not being able to ride it on bicycle paths and trails may be a deterrent.

E-bikes typically resemble a standard pedal bicycle with the addition of a rechargeable battery and electric motor to assist the rider with propulsion. In Europe they are commonly called pedelecs, for pedal electric bicycle. At least twelve states currently classify an e-bike as a motor vehicle.

The report represents a significant first step in developing a logical, practical approach to legally defining this mode of transportation and the safety precautions that should accompany it. For more information, visit the project page, where there will be more reports coming as research continues.

How Minnesota saves lives by spreading safety money thinly: Oregon Transportation Summit focus

2014-08-27T21:01:28+00:00

(First published by BikePortland.org)

Sue Groth’s job: use math and millions of dollars to stop injuries before they happen.

The team Groth leads at the Minnesota Department of Transportation has probably saved a few hundred lives over the last 10 years. In that time they’ve reinvented “highway safety” spending and seen traffic fatalities fall almost twice as fast as they have in Oregon and the rest of the country.

Groth is the plenary speaker at the Sept. 15 Oregon Transportation Summit hosted by OTREC at Portland State University. Michael Andersen of BikePortland spoke to her last week to talk about MnDOT’s daring decision to give up some of the “gobs of money” it gets for highway safety and hand it to local agencies instead.

What’s the nature of your work on the safety movement called Vision Zero, also known as Toward Zero Deaths?
My state happened to be one of the first to adopt it. We have had a program for over 10 years now and have had some pretty good success. We don’t have to accept the fact that 400 people a year die on the roads in Minnesota, or 33,000 nationally.

400?
Oh, I’d better give you a precise number: 387. Minnesota’s had great success. One year we actually got down to 368.

(Editor’s note: 387, it turns out, is seven deaths per 100,000 Minnesotans, down 38 percent since 2002. The national rate is 11 per 100,000; Oregon’s rate is nine per 100,000. Both of those rates are down a little over 20 percent since 2002.)

Wow. Is it just that Swedish people are good drivers?
(laughs) No, it’s more than that. We’ve got good people but we’ve also got good laws and have really made this a priority. When we started this program and started to look at where these were happening, we realized that a lot of the crashes were happening on our local system.

The majority of our fatal and serious crashes happen in rural areas. But in rural areas you don’t have a particular type of intersection or curve that is deadly. These types of crashes tend to happen somewhat randomly. You might not have a “dead man’s curve.” But you could take this money and spread it over a lot of little intersections: lower-cost strategies like pavement markings and lights and signing.

In the past, MnDOT would have just spent that money ourselves, because we have gobs of money to spend on safety. Now we would say, ‘No, we’re going to give that to the local level.’

Who is doing all the calculations you mention? State staff?
We used federal safety dollars and consulting staff to work with the county engineers. We wanted to make sure that the counties could embrace it. And it’s not just the infrastructure. Ninety-three percent of crashes include human error, something that a driver does wrong. You’ve got to address not only the roadway, but the human too.

My impression had been that in Sweden, where Vision Zero was developed, they assume people will always do dumb things, so they focus entirely on the roadway and don’t bother trying to educate users.
I think in the United States we still have a lot we can do with the human side. Thirty percent of our fatal crashes involve drunk driving. (Editor’s note: In Sweden the ratio is between 15 and 20 percent.)

The main knock I’ve heard against Vision Zero comes from street-safety advocates who think it’s just the latest buzzword, that we’re going to clap ourselves on the back and keep doing the same thing.
That’s interesting. To me, it is so not a buzzword. Because we are doing so much differently than we did 10 years ago that it’s incredible.

Why is safety such a powerful argument in the transportation world?
You can look at the sheer numbers of people and the economic cost. But that is nothing compared to anybody who’s ever lost somebody in a traffic death. It’s so personal and it’s so widespread. You never really get over it. That I think is very compelling for lawmakers and public policy people.

When we wanted to start installing cable barrier along our highways there was big pushback from certain parts of our orgnaization, because it was a new thing that they weren’t already doing: When it got hit, we would have to go out and fix it. But today, some of our workers say “This is the best thing we’ve ever done. We used to be the people who used to sit out here and close the road for six hours while they did a reconstruction of a fatal crash. We no longer are responding to those calls, because we have eliminated our fatal crashes.”

We did a study – and this was a pretty good study – we figured we’d saved 80 lives since we started installing this. 80 lives! That’s a lot of people who are going home at night. We don’t even know what life would have been like without those 80 people. I think that’s pretty compelling.

Registration for next month’s Oregon Transportation Summit is now open. Groth’s address, which will be joined by Leah Treat of Portland and Troy Costales of the Oregon Department of Transportation, will begin the event.

Research finds medians make driveways safer

2014-08-17T18:38:46+00:00

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.

Dixon's research team evaluated eight physical sites and four simulated scenarios with different driveway spacing and roadway cross section designs. The primary research goal was to better understand how median and bicycle lane configurations influence safety and operations at driveway locations.

For example, in one scenario, a driver making a right turn to enter a road where there is a raised median (as opposed to a two-way left turn lane) can focus directly on approaching vehicles from the left.

Dixon’s team found that the raised center median in this scenario can result in shorter critical gap values for right-turn maneuvers out of driveways. “Critical gap” refers to the minimum gap between cars that drivers seeking to enter the roadway will accept.

Their findings also suggest that the presence of the median helps to reduce a variety of crashes associated with mid-block driveway locations, including sideswipe crashes.

The team used crash data, traffic data and roadway information from driveway locations in Oregon, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. They supplemented the data with digital videos acquired during field studies of the sites. The five sites in Oregon had bike lanes, while the two Arkansas sites and one Oklahoma site did not. The research team recommends future in-depth studies that individually focus on the influence of bicycle lanes at driveway locations.

Researchers also performed simulation analysis in CORSIM to examine the influences of median type, traffic volume, and access density on traffic operational performance.

Their focus was on the influence of crash severity and type, as well as the associated gap acceptance for turning maneuvers at mid-block driveway locations.

They used the traffic simulator to study “aligned” (directly across the street from each other) versus “staggered” driveway orientations, and found that corridors with staggered driveway placement experienced considerably greater delay per vehicle when compared to their aligned driveway counterparts.

For more details, visit the project page or download the final report.

OTREC research examines ways to anonymize location data

2014-08-13T17:27:03+00:00

A new OTREC report explores an innovative technique for making household travel data more widely available without compromising individual privacy.

Public agencies spend vast amounts of money collecting information in household travel surveys.

In the report, Wider Dissemination of Household Travel Survey Data Using Geographical Perturbation Methods, lead investigator Kelly Clifton of Portland State University examines ways to make that information more accessible by planners and other professionals.

Survey respondents are guaranteed anonymity in exchange for their participation. In addition to asking which modes individuals use to get around, surveys learn where they live, where they work, their household sizes and demographic information.

Detailed geospatial referencing of the home, work and other travel destinations is common practice.

Such data can be of enormous use to planning professionals, but its dissemination must be balanced with the need to keep locations confidential.

To protect this confidentiality, data are often aggregated to a geographic level such as census tracts or transportation analysis zones (TAZs) before being publicly shared.

This limits the utility of the information. Details are lost with data aggregation. For example, walking trips can be affected to a large degree by the built environment. If all pedestrian trips are aggregated up to a larger zone, then questions about how they were affected by the built environment cannot be answered.

To allow more precise data to be more widely distributed without sacrificing participants’ anonymity, Clifton took a deep look into other geographical masking methods.

With the help of graduate student researcher Steven Gehrke, Clifton reviewed various methods of geo-masking, also known as geographical perturbation.

Their goal was to develop a conceptual framework to guide geographical perturbation efforts.

After looking into several methods, they tested one of the more promising methods by actually using it on household survey data for the Portland, Ore. metropolitan region.

With this process, researchers aimed to quantify the concepts of disclosure risk and data utility, in order to improve the understanding of their tradeoff.

The method they chose for empirical testing is known as the donut masking technique.

In this technique, as shown in the image below, a “donut” is defined around each protected point.

The inner ring of the donut, with the protected location in the center, is the anonymity zone: public records will not show that the point is located anywhere within that circle.

The boundary of the donut’s outer ring is defined by the data custodian; in urban contexts, it usually corresponds to an accessible walking distance. In more rural contexts, the outer ring may need to extend further where there is less population density.

The data points are then randomly re-distributed on a map so that they fall somewhere within the donut, between the inner and outer rings.

When the material becomes public, planners and other professionals will have more spatially sensitive information, without having access to the true locations of an individual’s home or workplace.

To test the donut masking technique, Clifton's team used it to explore the connections between 4,824 households and five measures of the built environment in the Portland, Ore. metro region.

They analyzed 25 scenarios, and each time, conducted an analysis into the vulnerability of a sampled household to identity disclosure.

They found that data custodians using this method must be aware of a sensitive "tipping point" between disclosure risk and data utility. Guidelines for calculating the position of the inner and outer rings, and discussion of other factors to consider, can be found in the final report.

Download it here, or visit the project page for more details.

U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer leads transportation forum at PSU

2014-08-07T20:03:25+00:00

Congressman Earl Blumenauer called together a group of transportation policy makers on Monday, August 4, for a “Rebuilding and Renewing” forum.

Transportation professionals and officials from every level of government, from the federal to the local, met at Portland State University to discuss how to maintain and revive America’s transportation infrastructure.

Blumenauer, the representative for Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, advocates fuel taxes and VMT taxes to pay for infrastructure needs.

As the Highway Trust Fund rapidly shrinks and America’s deteriorating roads and bridges silently cry out for maintenance, Congress is in the process of trying to determine the best, most sustainable path forward.

During Monday’s forum, a variety of voices were sought out and listened to. Bill Wyatt, executive director of the Port of Portland, gave opening remarks and introduced Blumenauer, who spoke about dwindling highway funds and the need for investment in infrastructure to keep the nation’s economy alive.

He was followed by Tamara Lundgren, CEO of Schnitzer Steel and Chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who described infrastructure maintenance as both an economic and a moral imperative. Not only does a reliable freight network strengthen commerce, Lundgren pointed out, but making the necessary improvements to transportation infrastructure can save lives as well as protect the environment. She cited the 2007 collapse of the I-35 bridge as an incident that must not be allowed to repeat.

Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, followed Lundgren and expanded upon the economic argument, pointing out that the economy is “interconnected, like pieces of a puzzle,” and that to be competitive in a global economy requires a world-class infrastructure.

Ted Wheeler, the state treasurer of Oregon, touched on the idea of using private funds for public infrastructure, a solution that some countries have turned to with success. Wheeler spoke about the 2014 Oregon State Legislature’s directive and funding to pursue seven trial projects designed to “reinvent” the public sector’s relationship with the private sector. Each of the pilot projects is large and complex relative to the local jurisdiction’s capacity, and is critical to the future economic prosperity of Oregon. The legislature, in providing funding and a directive, stipulated that the public must retain ownership of the infrastructure and there must be public accountability for the projects’ implementation.

Matt Garrett, Director of ODOT, and John Charles, President & CEO of the Cascade Policy Institute, talked about the need for more transportation funds and intelligent allocation of them. Following the speakers were three panel discussions.

Debra Dunn of Oregon Trucking Associations, Marie Dodds of AAA of Oregon/Idaho, and Ted Aadland of Associated General Contractors discussed the effects of federal funding on travel and commerce in a panel session moderated by Randy Miller, director of Produce Row.

Andre Baugh, of Group AGB, moderated a panel on local and regional perspectives on infrastructure. Panelists were Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury, and Jack Burkman, a council member of the City of Vancouver, Washington.

A third panel, on state and local funding options and challenges, was moderated by Mike McArthur, executive director of the Association of Oregon Counties. The panelists were representatives of city and state government: Steve Novick of the City of Portland, Oregon State Representative Tobias Read, and Karmen Fore, from the office of Governor John Kitzhaber.

Following the panel discussions, the microphone was opened to comments from the floor. Attendees were given the chance to speak about their perspectives and priorities regarding transportation policy, VMT and fuel taxes, and pressing infrastructure needs.

How does transit move you? Oregon Transportation Summit special focus

2014-07-22T22:22:15+00:00

Transit supporters offer up a host of arguments for their favorite form of transportation but may struggle to counter a response of “prove it.” This year’s Oregon Transportation Summit could help change that.

Fresh research showing some of the benefits of transit will keep the public transportation track lively and relevant during the sixth annual summit. Morning and afternoon workshops spotlight transit, bookending a luncheon keynote by noted transit planner Jarrett Walker.

The Oregon Transportation Summit takes place Monday, Sept. 15 at Portland State University.

University of Utah researcher Reid Ewing made national and international headlines recently with a study showing the effect of light rail in a busy travel corridor. The study, funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, was the first to document a drop in automobile traffic after the opening of a light-rail line. Ewing presents his research at a morning workshop, “Why Transit Makes you Feel Good.”

At the same session, Chris Bone of the University of Oregon will present on crowd-sourced evaluations of transit and Steve Callas of TriMet will present Portland State University-developed software to visualize performance data. Catherine Ciarlo of CH2M Hill moderates.

The afternoon workshop narrows the focus specifically to transit-oriented development. Arthur C. Nelson of the University of Utah presents hard numbers on TOD benefits regarding jobs, housing diversification, affordability and accessibility. OTREC director Jennifer Dill gives an overview of survey research involving TOD occupants and Megan Gibb of Metro examines recent TOD examples in the Portland metro area, including the new light-rail corridor. Nolan Lienhart of ZGF Architects moderates.

Keynote speaker Walker brings his experience and insight to a pivotal moment in transit planning. He helps transit providers clarify their values before making the difficult decisions that define their systems. After spending his early years watching transit policy shape Portland into the city we know today, Walker has taken his consulting across the continent and to Australia and New Zealand before returning to his roots in Portland.

Walker will share concepts from his book, Human Transit, and his blog of the same name, and offer books for sale after his presentation.

Find out more about this year’s summit, including speaker biographies and session descriptions.

Materials from past summits are available in the archive.