Postdoctoral candidates Joseph Broach and Arlie Adkins (both at Portland State University) were recently awarded $15,000 fellowships to assist them in completing their dissertation research. They were awarded the fellowships through an open and competitive process available to PhD candidates at Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Oregon Tech, Portland State University and the University of Utah.

Joseph's research will explore a travel mode choice framework incorporating realistic bike and walk routes. His research will consider a more complete mode choice behavioral framework that acknowledges the importance of attributes along the specific walk and bike routes that travelers are likely to consider. The proposed framework will then be applied to revealed preference travel datasets collected in Portland, Oregon. Measurement of nonmotorized trip distance/time, built environment, trip/tour, and attitude attributes as well as mode availability and model structure will be addressed explicitly. Route and mode choice models will be specified using discrete choice techniques.

He moved to Portland in 2006 after completing a B.A. in Liberal Studies and M.A. in Economics at the University of Montana.  Lifelong interests in transportation and how people make decisions led him to the Urban Studies PhD program at PSU. During his time here, Joe has worked on a number of research projects related to transportation data and modeling: Transit ITS DataTrimet Operator Absenteeism with Dr. Jim Strathman, Bicycle Route Choice with Dr. John Gliebe, and the Family Activity Study with Dr. Jennifer Dill. Joe helped design the next generation bicycle model for the Portland region in conjunction with Metro, and he co-founded PhT, a research-focused discussion group for PhD students in Transportation. Joe is currently working on his dissertation that hopes to improve modeling of walk and bike mode choice. When he's not in the lab, Joe enjoys riding his bicycle, hiking and fly-fishing in the mountains, and spending time with his lovely musical wife Rachel.

Arlie’s research will delve into the determinants of recent mover travel mode choice. New movers are an important, yet often overlooked, population in travel behavior research because they provide an opportunity to observe behavior adoption in newcontexts and because the roughly one-in-ten Americans who move each year are more likely to consider changes totheir daily routines, making them an ideal target population for efforts to shift travel behavior.  He will model the direct and indirect effects of the built environment on the proximate causes of behavior: attitudes, perceived behavioral control, social norms, and behavioral intention. Data in the model will come from a two-wave panel survey of recent movers in Portland, Oregon. Arlie’s fellowship is supported in part through an Institute for Sustainable Solutions grant. 

Arlie is in his fourth year in the urban studies PhD program at Portland State University. He has a master’s degree in city planning from UC Berkeley and previously worked in TriMet’s project planning department as a community affairs specialist. His coauthored paper (with OTREC Director Jennifer Dill) titled Unpacking Walkability: Testing the Influence of Urban Design Features on Perceptions of Walking Environment Attractivenesswas recently published in the Journal of Urban Design. In August, Arlie presented a paper on voluntary travel behavior change programs (e.g. SmartTrips) at the International Conference on Traffic and Transport Psychology in Groningen, The Netherlands. His dissertation uses psychological theories of behavior change to explore travel mode adoption of recent movers in six U.S. cities.