Active Transportation Research at Northern Arizona University

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Dr. Smaglik is currently working on three separate transportation research projects at Northern Arizona University. This talk will touch briefly on each of the three projects, the concepts behind them, workplans, and expected deliverables. The projects include work with the Oregon DOT on the impact of less than optimal vehicle detection on adaptive control algorithms, development of a ped priority algorithm through a NITC project (as a Portland State subcontractor), and internally funded work on a power harvesting traffic sensor.

Dr. Edward J. Smaglik, P.E. is an Associate Professor at Northern Arizona University (NAU), Flagstaff, AZ, in the Department of Civil Engineering, Construction Management, and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Smaglik has over 7 years of academic research and teaching experience, preceded by 2 years of experience as a post-doctoral research associate. In addition to typical academic teaching responsibilities, he has served as Principal Investigator on transportation related projects on a wide range of topics, including the development and implementation of a pedestrian priority algorithm, the implication of vehicle detection degradation on higher level traffic control algorithms, the analysis of travel time data related to...

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Sustaining a Transportation Legacy from the 2010 Olympic Winter Games

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Abstract: Transportation planning for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games— Vancouver’s largest special event ever—was a complex challenge compounded by venue security road closures throughout the city. Through public engagement, careful planning and evaluation, and collaboration with transportation partners, the City of Vancouver developed a wide range of innovative strategies to create its Host City Olympic Transportation Plan. By almost every indicator, the transportation operations and transportation demand management (TDM) strategies of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games were an unqualified success. However, the goals of the Host City transportation plan were further verified the Host City Olympic Transportation Plan Downtown Monitoring Study in partnership with the University of British Columbia (UBC) to evaluate the transportation impact of the Games by using in-the-field data collection. The transportation legacy of the Host City Olympic Transportation Plan was a proven example of a large scale travel behaviour shift to sustainable modes, in unprecedented and record numbers.  The experience of the Host City Olympic Transportation Plan demonstrated that residents and businesses can be motivated to take sustainable modes of transportation if convenient alternatives to vehicle travel are available. This presentation will discuss the detailed results of the Host City Olympic Transportation...

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Bicycling in Davis, CA : A Critical Look at Policy and Behavior in the First Platinum Bicycle City in the U.S.

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In 2005, Davis, California was the first city in the U.S. to be named a Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. Although Davis has long been held up as a model bicycling community, where residents bike as a normal part of their daily lives, it has not been rigorously studied. Several studies underway at UC Davis are helping to fill this gap: an analysis of the history of bicycling policy in Davis; a behavioral study of factors contributing to high levels of bicycling in Davis in comparison; and an evaluation of a recent campaign to get kids to bicycle to soccer games. This presentation offers highlights from a three studies to provide a critical assessment of Davis as a bicycling community.

Susan Handy is a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the director of the Sustainable Transportation Center at the University of California Davis. Her research focuses on the connections between land use and transportation, and she is well known for her work on the impact of neighborhood design on travel behavior. She serves on three committees of the Transportation Research Board and on the editorial boards of several journals in the fields of planning, transportation, and public health.

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