Transferring GIS / Community-Based Transportation Assessment Tools Nationwide

Marc Schlossberg, University of Oregon

Co-investigator:

Summary:

“Livability” has recently been declared one of four top priorities by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), and the USDOT, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have entered into an historic partnership to address the issue. Ultimately, this term refers to the quality of life within one’s community and the ease, comfort, and joy with which one can access places he or she want to go. For most Americans, their neighborhoods have been designed to predominantly accommodate the automobile, and more active forms of transportation such as walking and biking have been neglected Previous and current OTREC work has developed a suite of GIS tools focused on assessing these environments in a fine-scaled, field-based, geo-referenced format so that local communities can better identify gaps in their networks and work to make appropriate improvements. This work explicitly focuses on the role and capacity of a general citizenry to conduct built environment active transportation audits and engage in facilitated discussions about the data and maps resulting from their community data collection.

Project Details

Project Type:
Technology Transfer
Project Status:
Completed
End Date:
September 30,2009
UTC Grant Cycle:
OTREC 2009
UTC Funding:
$69,900