Vehicle operating dynamics data have a fundamental impact on the design of roadways, but collecting this type of data is not part of your typical college curriculum.
Instead, engineering students are handed a textbook, leaving them without a firsthand experience of how accelerations and decelerations “feel” to the driver, the ultimate consumer of their designs.
Seeking to change this norm, Roger Lindgren and C.J. Riley, civil engineering professors at the Oregon Institute of Technology, undertook a...
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A newly published NITC education project offers tools for teaching collaborative regional planning in communities close to national parks and other natural attractions.
Referred to as Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) communities, these unique places have their own set of challenges and opportunities. They are often located near small towns or rural areas with limited transportation networks, but due to the periodic influx of visitors, can experience “big city problems” like congestion and sprawl.
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Maria Sipin, Graduate Assistant, Portland State University
Maria Sipin is a Portland State University grad student in Urban Planning and Public Health, and an IBPI Active Transportation Scholar. Watch Maria's video, "Communicating Intersections," on the power that transportation planners have to affect positive, equitable change in our daily lives. Or, read the 2018 final report she co-authored "Elevating People: Planning for Equitable Travel to Marquam Hill" - a report on OHSU’s vision for diversity and inclusion and their goals to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips and promote the increased use of sustainable multimodal transportation.
IBPI 2017 - 2018 Scholar| LinkedIn | PSU Institute for Sustainable Solutions Staff Member
Tell us about yourself:
I started grad school in fall 2016, just a week after moving to Portland from Los...
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To help maximize the implementation of U.S. DOT’s commitment to livable communities, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) has launched its third round of pooled fund research funding in 2018. Agency partners are invited to submit problem statements by May 15, 2018.
The pooled fund program offers a process by which cities, counties, MPOs and other regional or local agencies can pool relatively small pots of research dollars to then leverage NITC matched funds for a single, collaborative project.
We held an online information session on February 28, 2018. Watch the video to learn more about the funding process, identifying partners, and crafting an effective problem statement:
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Principal Investigator: Rob Zako, University of Oregon
Project Overview: Effectiveness of Transportation Funding Mechanisms for Achieving National, State, and Metropolitan Economic, Health, and Other Livability Goals
Learn more about this research by viewing the two-page Project Brief; download the toolkit co-published with T4A, related presentations and the full Final Report on the Project Overview page. Hear firsthand from the PI by watching the post-webinar recording here.
FEBRUARY 2018 UPDATE
The full final report on this project is now published. The final report offers a comprehensive look at six case study states' strategies to ensure they are delivering value to taxpayers in a transparent process.
SEPTEMBER 2017
What do Americans get in return for their transportation investments? It’s a simple enough question on the surface, but digging for an answer yields a gnarled knot of...
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The third and final phase of our bike share equity research project has been published, with new findings from a survey of bike share users.
Riders targeted for equity-focused outreach efforts—lower-income individuals and people of color—were most likely to cite cost savings or discounted membership as reasons why they joined, while higher-income and white users were more likely to cite the convenience of using bike share. Lower-income riders were also more...
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The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2018 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by April 2, 2018.
Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award at least $1 million under our general research grant in 2018 for projects that support NITC’s theme: improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. Our theme includes a few key topics:
- Increasing access to opportunities
- Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure
- Advancing innovation and smart cities
- Developing data, models, and tools
Research projects must focus on transportation, with additional consideration given to projects that emphasize equity and diversity in their research and partnerships. We’re seeking projects that demonstrate a strong potential to move transportation research into practice, shape national and international conversations, and respond to the needs of practitioners and policymakers.
Priority is given to projects that are collaborative, multidisciplinary, multi-campus, and support the development of untenured-tenure-track transportation faculty.
Key Dates
- Abstracts due: April 2...
Every year NITC offers Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowships which cover expenses for the recipient while working on a dissertation consistent with NITC's theme of improving the mobility of people and goods to build strong communities.
Alexander Lee, a Graduate Research Assistant in Systems and Industrial Engineering at University of Arizona, is our 2017 NITC dissertation fellow has been funded to investigate his study on Using Time-Series Analysis to Precisely Identify and Rank Road Hotspots.
Over the past decades, many ranking methods have been proposed for "road hotspots". However, results vary from method to method, and one of the issues behind ranking is the element of subjectivity. One approach to resolve these issues is the use of combined models. One of the combined models is the Enhanced Empirical Bayesian (EB) method that incorporates the use of the similarity measure based on the Proportion Discordance Ratio (PDR). This model is developed to assess and objectively quantify similarity among road segments based on crash patterns, each of which contains a unique combination of selected crash-related features.
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A NITC education grant funded a new course for planners, engineers, scientists and students to help improve their data processing workflow.
Liming Wang, an assistant professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies & Planning at Portland State University, is on a mission to simplify data processing. A NITC education grant supported his efforts to develop a new course: Introduction to Data Science (Aug 6 - 10, 2018). The course is designed to help students and professionals to improve their workflow for data-intensive research. The course covers how to collect data, clean them up, visualize, explore, model and eventually compile the data with findings in a report.
"I've pretty...
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Alex Bigazzi, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia
Alex Bigazzi, a former Post-Doctoral NITC researcher and student, received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Portland State University in 2014. Learn more about Alex:
NITC Researcher Profile | LinkedIn | UCB Faculty Profile
Read an article on his recent research on congestion pricing
Tell us about yourself:
My name is Alex Bigazzi and I am an assistant professor, joint-appointed in transportation engineering and planning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. My main research areas are transportation emissions and air quality and active travel.
Why did you decide to attend Portland State University?
The original decision was driven almost entirely by location. I was living in Portland, decided to go back to school for a second...
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