If you weren’t one of the 10,000 people who attended the Transportation Research Board’s Annual Meeting in January, there are fifty students and twenty faculty for PSU, UO, OSU and OIT who can tell you what they learned there.  OTREC's bright yellow lanyards made our presence especially visible! PSU student Brian Davis blogged about his experience, OTREC’s Jon Makler was interviewed in a local newspaper, and the Oregon “delegation” at the conference was covered by both local and national blogs. Team OTREC filed some daily debriefs, highlighting presentations on topics such as federal stimulus investments in Los Angeles and Vermont’s efforts to address their transportation workforce crisis with returning military veterans (as well as the...

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Transportation and Road Weather

Where: Room 204 of the Distance Learning Center Wing of the Urban Center at PSU
Speaker: Rhonda Young, University of Wyoming
Topic: Transportation and Road Weather

Summary: Weather has a tremendous impact on the transportation system and is one of the largest contributors to non-recurring delay and increased crashes.  Road weather is the a multidisciplinary area involving transportation engineers and meteorologists who are working to mitigate the negative effects of weather on the operation and maintenance practices of transportation systems.  The talk covers the broad types of issues being studied in this field and looks at ways in which technology is playing a large part in the proposed solutions.  The issue of weather as a complicating factor in the use of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies  is also discussed.

Bio: Rhonda Young is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering at the University of Wyoming since 2002 and teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in Traffic Operations, Transportation Planning, Transportation Design and Traffic Safety.  She completed her master and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering at the University of Washington and...

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Abstract: TriMet has used a computer aided dispatch (CAD)/automatic vehicle location (AVL) system to manage bus and rail operations since the late 1990s. TriMet is currently in the process of updating the CAD/AVL system, and anticipates improvements in bus tracking and performance monitoring. This presentation will show how TriMet uses data from the system to support intelligent transportation systems (ITS) such as TransitTracker and automatic stop announcements in buses and trains, as well as to analyze transit operations such as on time performance and passenger loads.

Speaker Bios: Steve Callas is the Manager of Service and Performance Analysis at TriMet in Portland Oregon, where he is responsible for operations performance monitoring and analysis. This includes analyzing TriMet’s comprehensive automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter data archive. Additionally, Steve is involved in various transit operations research projection in conjunction with Portland State University and OTREC. Steve has been with TriMet for over 15 years.

David is an operations analyst with TriMet. He is involved in AVL data mining and analysis, safety analysis, automatic stop announcements, transit signal priority, and real-time...

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PORTAL: Lessons from Developing an Archived Data User Service in Portland, Oregon

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Summary: Researchers from the transportation, planning and health fields share the common goal of promoting physically active lifestyle. One challenge that researchers often face is the measurement of physical activity, particularly among children. This is because the sporadic nature of children’s physical activity patterns makes it difficult to recall and quantify such activities. Additionally, children’s lower cognitive functioning compared to adults prevents them from accurately recalling their activities. This presentation will describe the design and application of a novel self-report instrument - the Graphs for Recalling Activity Time (GReAT) - for measuring children’s activity time use patterns. The instrument was applied in a study of children’s risk for obesity and diabetes in a predominately Hispanic community in Milwaukee, WI. Time-use data for two weekdays and one weekend day were collected for various physical and sedentary activities. The data was then assessed against measurements of the children’s cardiovascular fitness, weight status and insulin resistance through exploratory analysis and structured equation modeling. Findings on GReAT’s reliability and new evidence on the impacts of time-use in different activities on children’s risk for...

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The video begins at 1:55.

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Abstract: Traffic counts are an important piece of information used by transportation planners; however, while count programs are common for motor vehicles most efforts at counting non-motorized traffic – cyclists and pedestrians – are minimal. Long-term, continuous counts of non-motorized traffic can be used to estimate month of year and day of week adjustment factors that can be used to scale short-duration counts to estimates of annual average daily traffic. Here we present results from continuous counts of non-motorized traffic at 6 locations on off-street trails in Minneapolis, MN using two types of automated counters (active infrared and inductive loop detectors). We found that traffic volumes varied significantly by location, but the month of year and day of week patterns were mostly consistent across locations and mode (i.e., cycling, walking, or mixed mode). We give examples of how this information could be used to extrapolate short-duration counts to estimates of annual average daily traffic as well as Bicycle Miles Traveled (BMT) and Pedestrian Miles Traveled (PMT) for defined lengths of off-street trails. More research is needed to determine if non-motorized traffic patterns (and subsequently our adjustment factors) for off-street...

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This summer we're hosting a two-part data science course. You can register for one or the other– or attend both parts at a discount: Data Science Course 2018, Part 2: Intermediate/Advanced Scientific Computing for Planners, Engineers, and Scientists.

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CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Did you ever feel you are “drinking from a hose” with the amount of data you are attempting to analyze? Have you been frustrated with the tedious steps in your data processing and analysis process and thinking, “There’s gotta be a better way to do things”? Are you curious what the buzz of data science is about? If any of your answers are yes, then this course is for you.

Classes will all be hands-on sessions with lecture, discussions and labs. Participants can choose to sign up for one or both courses. For more information, ...

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Summary: Linking planning and operations is vital to improving transportation decision making and the overall effectiveness of transportation systems. In this seminar Steve will discuss data and modeling methods supported by the PTV Vision software suite to facilitate integrated planning for operations.

Bio: PSU Alum Steve Perone is the President of PTV America, Inc. the North American subsidiary of German software provider PTV Group. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon he is responsible for supporting a diverse customer base of traffic engineers and transportation planners from over 1,000 public agencies, universities and consulting firms combined. His experience draws on time spent in roles as both a public sector employee and as a private consultant supporting public agencies. In his role he actively supports many ITE and TRB events and programs.

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Abstract: Urban arterials often represent complex venues of transportation operations, co-mingling non-motorized users with transit services and a wide variety of land uses and traffic patterns. This presentation presents results related to the evaluation of a new Adaptive Traffic Control System (SCATS) on Powell Boulevard in southeast Portland. The presentation will discuss challenges and opportunities associated with the evaluation of new technologies and the development of comprehensive urban arterial performance measures.

Speaker Bio: Miguel Figliozzi is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Portland State University. His diverse research interests include transit and traffic operations, bicycle and pedestrian modes, emissions and air quality modeling, and freight and logistics. He holds a MS from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD from the University of Maryland College Park. Figliozzi is a member of the Transportation Research Board Network Modeling Committee, Freight and Logistics, and Intermodal Terminal Design Committees. Papers, reports, and more detailed information available at Figliozzi's webpage: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~maf/

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