Portland, Oregon is known for being a bike city, even called America's Best Bike City by Bicycling Magazine, so it's no surprise at all that Portland State University is full of bike enthusiasts.
Sirisha Kothuri, an OTREC scholar for the past two years and a current Ph.D. candidate at Portland State University, has been awarded one of NITC'S 2013 dissertation fellowships.
The $15,000 fellowship -- funded through an ISS (Institute for Sustainable Solutions) grant -- along with an $800 OTREC/NITC scholarship for the 2012-2013 academic year, will assist Kothuri with her research into pedestrian signal timing.
Sirisha was born and raised in Hyderabad, India, and still misses the heat — or at least, the warmth; she has yet to become completely acclimated to Portland, Ore weather. In Hyderabad she obtained a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Osmania University in 1999. She moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1999 to get a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University.
A visit to Illinois for her brother's graduation opened her eyes to the automobile-centric cities that make up much of the United States. She was surprised at some of the infrastructure in the Midwest, which decidedly favors cars over pedestrian and other means of active transport.
Walking plays a significant...
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Susan Petheram, a Ph.D. candidate in the Metropolitan Planning, Policy, & Design program at the University of Utah, has recently been awarded a NITC dissertation fellowship.
NITC fellowships are awarded to fund research on surface transportation topics that fit under the NITC theme of safe, healthy, and sustainable transportation choices to foster livable communities. Petheram's research focuses on the integration of transportation and land use, and on building healthy communities through transit access.
Her dissertation research involves evaluating some of the effects of the light rail system in Salt Lake County. Scarcely more than a decade old, the TRAX light rail system has three lines in service as of 2013, and some of the transportation researchers at the University of Utah are taking advantage of this living laboratory to explore the effects of a light rail system upon the neighborhoods and suburbs that it serves.
Calvin Tribby, for example, another NITC fellow from the University of Utah, is observing the new transit opportunities' effect on public health. Petheram's research focuses on a different angle: the light rail's effect on property values.
In particular, she is interested in...
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University of Oregon Master's student Joe McAndrew was recently awarded an Eno fellowship and invited to participate in the 2013 Eno Leadership Development Conference.
The fellowship is an extraordinary opportunity for students on a career track to become transportation policymakers. Only 20 fellows nationwide are chosen each year, and only one student from each university transportation program can be nominated by their school. McAndrew attended the 21st annual conference in Washington, D.C. from June 2 to 6, all expenses paid.
"It was fabulous," said the second-year planning student from UO. In the course of the four-day conference he was able to attend a variety of panels and events, but said that for him, "the true highlight was just the people that we were able to meet."
Conference attendees included "high-level officials, executive directors from all sectors and levels of government," McAndrew said, "from the freight industry, which included trucks, rail, and port; to the airline industry, to Capitol Hill staffers... we also met with the executive directors from Parsons-Brinckerhoff, AASHTO and the like. It was an all-encompassing opportunity."
The Eno Center for Transportation is a non-partisan "think-tank" that promotes policy innovation in the field of transportation...
OTREC at Portland State University welcomed Eva Heinen of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, for a special seminar June 18. Around 40 people attended the presentation, held at the Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory and titled “Cycling in the Netherlands and Multi-Modality.”
Eva Heinen is assistant professor of infrastructure planning and mobility at the Department of Spatial Planning and Environment, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen. She earned a Ph.D. from Delft University of Technology in 2011 focusing on bicycle commuting.
Many people in Groningen and The Netherlands as a whole combine transit and bicycling for trips. A typical configuration involves cycling from home to a train station and then renting another bicycle to reach the final destination, Heinen said.
Few people take bicycles on transit, Heinen said, and buses don’t offer bike racks or other accommodations. Folding bikes, whose compact size allows for portability, are one exception, Heinen said. Electric-assist bikes are also popular, particularly with older people.
Heinen has published many papers on cycling in international and national journals and has a large international network in cycling. She spent three months at the University of California in Davis as a visiting scholar. She is a member of the editorial board of Rooilijn, a Dutch journal for science and policy in spatial planning; a member of the Bicycle Committee; co-chair of the...
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Calvin Tribby, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, was recently awarded one of NITC's 2013 dissertation fellowships.
The 2013 NITC dissertation fellowships have been awarded, and Gail Meakins, of the University of Utah, has been selected for a $7,500 NITC fellowship to support her dissertation research.
Meakins's Ph.D. program of study combines her two fields of interest by studying the connection between the built environment and public health.
A former athletic director, Meakins made a major career change in 2008 to go back to school and study Urban Planning.
"My lifelong passion for, and interest in, physical activity and sport began at a very early age," she said. Always a competitive swimmer and runner, she became intrigued with city design over time.
After earning her Bachelor's and Master's of Arts in Physical Education from the University of California, Berkeley in the mid-1970's, Meakins worked for over 20 years in physical education and health at the middle school, high school, and collegiate level.
"Throughout the years I have had the opportunity to travel extensively, and developed a strong interest in both urban design and architecture," Meakins said. In the course of her travels, she couldn't help but notice wide differences between neighborhoods, in terms of the availability of active travel modes.
Her...
Read moreOTREC at Portland State University is pleased to announce the 2013 OTREC/NITC scholars.
Each year, OTREC and NITC recognize outstanding students, awarding them scholarships to further their work on transportation projects.
This year's scholarship winners tackle a range of projects, including long-range visions on how to improve equity in transportation, plans for proposed facility upgrades at specific locations, investigations into new ways to strengthen pavement, and the development of advanced technologies to assist the flow of transportation in the real world.
OTREC executive committee member Marc Schlossberg of University of Oregon will present a lecture June 19 for the U.S. Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration in Washington, D.C. Schlossberg will offer insights into the Sustainable Cities Initiative as part of the U.S. DOT's Transportation Innovation Series.
The Sustainable Cities Initiative at the University of Oregon promotes education, service, public outreach and research on the design and development of sustainable cities. The initiative's Sustainable City Year program puts the institutional resources of the University of Oregon to use solving the problems of a single Oregon city. Each year, the program connects around 30 courses across a dozen disciplines and involves more than 500 students. Students work to address projects identified by city staff.
Schlossberg's lecture will provide details on the educational model, explain how the model works and provide details on how it could change higher education to meet transportaiton needs.
Click here for details on the lecture.
More information on the Sustainable Cities Initiative is here.
Even as Portland racks up bike-friendly honors, ongoing research at Portland State University is shedding light on a new travel option that promises to get even more people on two wheels. Electric-assist bikes, or e-bikes, could hold the key to increasing cycling, particularly among women, older adults and people with physical limitations.
Portland State researchers Jennifer Dill and John MacArthur are exploring people’s perceptions and attitudes toward e-bikes and evaluating their use to see if these bikes encourage new cyclists. This spring, they’re loaning out locally made, GPS-equipped e-bikes to 120 people to learn about people’s actual experience using the bikes, marking the first time such research has been done in the country.
The research also includes a survey on e-bike use, which will help others understand the potential market. People who have ridden e-bikes can participate in this research by taking the survey at tinyurl.com/e-bike-survey.
E-bike use is increasing in North America, with many people switching from private cars and others using e-bikes to keep cycling as they age or after an injury. Increased use brings increased scrutiny, and efforts are already underway to limit where e-bikes can go and who can ride them. Many states require e-bike riders be licensed, set age limits or both.
Some local regulations prohibit e-bikes on bicycle and pedestrian paths. The city of Toronto,...
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