In town to network and share research results, participants in the Region X Student Transportation Conference also saw the inner workings of the transportation system and even got to stop Portland traffic.
The ninth annual conference drew around 75 people to Portland November 18. The conference showcases student transportation research in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska and is entirely organized and run by students.
This year, the conference also featured breakout sessions and tours with working transportation professionals. Groups visited the Oregon Department of Transportation Region I incident management command center, dug into city of Portland traffic signal systems and operations, toured the city’s bicycle infrastructure and explored the mechanics of Portland’s drawbridges in detail with three bridge lifts.
Portland State University’s student group, Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning, or STEP, hosted the conference, which was sponsored by OTREC. The conference provides plenty of formal and informal opportunities for students working at different universities to inform each other, said Kristi Currans, an organizer with STEP.
“My favorite part is just having all the students get together and find out all the research everyone is doing,” Currans said. “Even within Portland State, if people are working for different professors, I might not know what they’re working on.”
The conference drew students from Portland State...
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The third Sustainable City Year partnership, this year with Springfield, Ore., is officially underway after a kickoff ceremony Sept. 28 at the University of Oregon. The experiential learning program, part of the OTREC-supported Sustainable Cities Initiative, focused on the cities of Gresham and Salem, respectively, in its first two years.
Each year, Sustainable City Year channels the resources of courses across disciplines to serve a single city for an entire academic year. Students gain invaluable experience working directly with city staffs on real-world projects. The cities gain the resources to take on needed projects that would never see the light of day without the program.
In Salem, the program encompassed 28 courses, 25 faculty members on two campuses, 10 disciplines and more than 500 students and 80,000 hours. The Springfield partnership is expected to involve more than 400 students and 20 faculty members. Projects will involve Springfield city staff from several departments and participation from the Springfield Utility Board, Willamalane Park and Recreation District, Metro Wastewater Management Commission, United Way, the ...
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Oregon State University’s student ITE chapter is the reigning Western District ITE chapter after taking the Student Chapter Award at the district’s annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. The award honors the outstanding chapter for the entire 13-state region, which encompasses 34 student chapters.
The award marks a quick turnaround for a chapter that was dormant a few years ago. Faculty adviser Karen Dixon restarted the chapter when she arrived at Oregon State in 2005. “Another professor, David Hurwitz, came from an active chapter and shared insights he had as a student,” Dixon said. “That helped give us that push.”
Applying for the honor requires a thorough accounting of all the chapter’s activities, Dixon said. “You have to document every tiny thing.”
And having a lot to document was one of the reasons Oregon State won the award, said student chapter President Lacy Brown. “We did a lot of activities out in the community,” Brown said. “A lot of outreach to other students on campus who weren’t necessarily in our chapter.”
The chapter brought in speakers from private consultants and public agencies, took field trips across the state and attended conferences in the Northwest and beyond, including the Transportation Research Board...
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In transportation funding decisions, you don’t count until you’re counted. That fact can lead to cyclists and pedestrians, often overlooked in traffic counts, getting less than their share of transportation money. OTREC hosted a conference Sept. 15 to address that problem.
“Without the data, you have an incomplete picture of how the (transportation) system is being used,” said OTREC researcher Chris Monsere, the conference organizer. “And it’s easier to make the case for resources if you know how the system is being used.”
The conference, called the “Bike and Pedestrian Program Information Exchange & Technology Transfer Summit Meeting,” brought together officials from local and state transportation agencies and consultants to share features of the best counting programs and technology. The forum helped bridge a gap between people who count motor vehicles and those who count bicycle and pedestrian traffic.
“We wanted to raise a little awareness of both sides of the equation,” Monsere said. “There are things both can learn from the other.” <All presentations available for download at the end of this article>
Nonmotorized counting programs often get large numbers of motivated people involved quickly and have a strong network for distributing results of counts. Motorized counts tend to be more systematic and uniform.
The motorized traffic counts have a jump on their non-motorized counterparts, Monsere said. That’s largely a result of...
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The third annual Oregon Transportation Summit drew 275 people to Portland State University for what has become a leading regional venue to connect transportation professionals with each other and with academic researchers. Workshops and plenary sessions spread some of the best ideas in transportation, while a poster session shared the latest research from OTREC faculty and students.
The OTREC awards honored leaders in their field. In an emotional presentation, Chris Achterman accepted the Peter DeFazio Transportation Hall of Fame award on behalf of his sister, Gail Achterman, who recently stepped down as chair of the Oregon Transportation Commission and is undergoing chemotherapy.
Achterman brought a different perspective to the commission, OTREC Director Jennifer Dill said in presenting the award. “Gail’s direction helped the Oregon Department of Transportation redefine itself, emphasizing active and multimodal transportation,” Dill said. “With her diverse background and open mind, she has welcomed the best ideas from multiple disciplines, recognizing their implication for transportation.”
In prepared remarks, Achterman returned the praise. “The Summit is only one...
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OTREC has teamed up with Portland-based Green Lite Motors to bring a 100 mile-per-gallon vehicle closer to market. OTREC researchers at the Oregon Institute of Technology will evaluate and improve the performance of the two-seat vehicle.
The project grows out of a commercialization grant from the Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center, or Oregon BEST. Oregon Tech researchers built a prototype model for Green Lite Motors under that grant.
"This is going to take it from a completed prototype to a refined drive system,” said Tim Miller, president and CEO of Green Lite Motors. “They’ll test the performance and efficiency of the hybrid drive system and we’ll be able to refine the software and other things that control the system and optimize its performance.”
The Oregon Tech team built a three-wheeled prototype vehicle based on the Suzuki Burgman 650 scooter platform. “It combines the best of several things,” Miller said. “You get the full enclosure and safety you have in a car but with the nimbleness and ease of parking of a motorcycle.”
Although researchers can adapt some of the auto industry’s testing methods, others don’t apply very well for such an unusual vehicle, said Oregon Tech Associate Professor James Long, the project’s principal investigator. “There aren’t many vehicles out there of this type, so we’ll be...
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The Initiative for Bicycle & Pedestrian Innovation at Portland State University hosted a weeklong boot camp on bicycle and pedestrian design geared toward transportation planners, engineers and other public officials.
“There’s a dearth of knowledge among most practitioners,” said IBPI Director Lynn Weigand. “Most engineering and planning curricula don’t include any elements of bicycle and pedestrian planning and design.
“There’s an increased demand for alternatives to make communities safer for biking and walking.”
The intensive course, Aug. 15 to 19, featured classroom sessions, discussions, daily field tours of Portland facilities and project applications. Public- and private-sector experts served as program instructors.
For attendees, the program offered the chance to learn how various active transportation concepts fit together in one community. Tyler Palmer, a division manager with the Moscow, Idaho, public works department, came looking for guidance on his city’s multimodal transportation master plan.
“This is going to be really helpful for us in steering that process,” Palmer said. “It will help give us the tools we need to analyze our system and see what works best.”
Jumping into a master plan without...
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Designing efficient transit systems is only one piece of the puzzle. Getting people to use them is another.
In his bestselling “Transit Maps of the World” and followup work “Paris Metro Style: In Map and Station Design,” Mark Ovenden detailed the beauty of maps people use to navigate transit systems and of the stations themselves.
“When you walk into the Paris Metro system, with its art nouveau stations, it does affect you, whether you notice it or not,” Ovenden said. “It feels nice to be in. It encourages people to use the train.”
Ovenden will offer his take on transportation systems as the keynote speaker at the Oregon Transportation Summit, Friday, Sept. 9 at Portland State University.
Ovenden vaulted to fame with “Transit Maps of the World” after a career in radio and television. But he always had an interest in collecting maps and riding transit systems. “On a school trip to Paris at 9 or 10, I just wanted to ride the Metro all day,” he said. “The teacher said, ‘no, come with us to the Eiffel Tower, you idiot.’”
Even out of context, the maps Ovenden compiled serve as an art work. But much of their beauty lies in their function: getting people around smoothly. Some of the best...
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Moving cyclists just a few feet from automobiles can make a big improvement in air quality, an OTREC research project found. That’s the distance between a traditional bike lane and a separated cycle track.
Researcher Linda George, the chair of Portland State University’s Environmental Science and Management Department, looked at Portland’s Broadway cycle track as part of a study on urban air quality. Download the final report. Specifically, George’s team examined the microscopic particles, called ultrafine particles (UFP), given off by automobile engines.
Those tiny particles can get deep into lungs and other tissues and contribute to a host of ailments. Cyclists are doubly at risk: they bike through some of the highest concentrations of UFP while their exertion causes them to breathe more heavily, introducing more of the particles into their systems.
George and her team, which included Portland State associate professors Miguel Figliozzi and Chris Monsere, looked at whether distance and barriers affect the amount of UFP that cyclists encounter. Portland’s Broadway cycle track offered a perfect study setting. In 2009, the Portland Bureau of Transportation created a dedicated cycle path by moving parking away from the curb, using parked cars to separate bicycle and...
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On May 25, OTREC Director Jennifer Dill traveled to Vancouver, B.C. to talk about the impact of new bike lane facilities in downtown Portland. The conference, Changing Lanes, was about improving bike-car relationships on Canada’s roads. The conference attracted leading international and domestic experts to discuss issues and research on bike/car safety, infrastructure and the business opportunities and costs of increasing bike use in cities.
Dill participated in the panel discussion “Building A Better Connection: How Can We Build Infrastructure That Supports A Smoother Relationship For Drivers and Cyclists” (Watch the discussion here). She was joined by Erick Villagomez, professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture; Luci Moraes, transportation planner for the city of Surrey, B.C.; Darryl Young, urban planner and steering committee member for the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation; and Councilor Geoff Meggs of the city of Vancouver.
Dill presented research performed by OTREC on the reactions of cyclists, motorists and pedestrians to new bike facilities. In the summer of 2009, the city of Portland installed a cycle track on SW Broadway near PSU’s campus which served as the primary study area. Researchers surveyed users in the area to gauge their reactions.
“Overall,...
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