National Institute for Transportation and Communities

Torrey Lyons, University of Utah

• Download the Final Report (PDF)
• Download the Project Brief (PDF)
• Join us on Sept. 19th at Portland State to hear Dr. Lyons’ talk on “The Effects of Transit and Compactness on Regional Economic Outcomes”

Transit agencies often focus on ridership as a primary measure of performance: If enough people are riding transit, then the system is a success. But who are those riders, and why is volume the benchmark?

This viewpoint can skip over an important aspect of a transit agency’s function; that is, providing opportunity to...

The NITC program has selected two dissertation fellows for the spring 2016 round of dissertation funding.

Portland State University Ph.D. candidates Patrick Singleton and Kristina Currans will each be awarded a $15,000 fellowship to support their doctoral dissertation research.

Both Currans and Singleton are also Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Graduate Fellows.

Singleton, a former Eno fellow and NITC’s 2015 student of the year, will focus his research on the “positive utility of travel.” 

Traditionally, travel is considered a means to an end, and travel demand is derived from activity demand. More recently, scholars have questioned these axioms, noting that some people enjoy traveling, use travel time productively, and may travel for non-utilitarian reasons.

Singleton will explore this concept, empirically investigating what factors determine the positive utility of travel and its impact on travel behavior. 

His research has important implications for transportation planning and policy, through improving knowledge of influences on sustainable modes and anticipating potential behavioral shifts with autonomous vehicles.

Currans, a former NITC scholar, student of the year and inductee into the Portland State University Women Engineers Hall of Fame, will be researching data and methodological issues in assessing multimodal transportation impacts.

As cities aim to promote sustainable, multimodal growth, existing...

To be published later this spring is some of the first bicycle-focused research into shared space, a controversial urban design approach pioneered in the Netherlands in the 1990s.

Allison Duncan, a PhD candidate in urban studies & planning at Portland State University, earned a NITC dissertation fellowship in 2014 and used the research grant to study shared space intersections in the United Kingdom.

Shared space designs have recently been adopted at a handful of sites in the UK and others scattered across Europe, Australia and New Zealand. They are characterized by a lack of physical guidelines such as curbs, road surface markings and traffic signs to define who has the right-of-way.

The idea is for pedestrians, cars and bicycles to mingle in a common zone and use eye contact and natural communication to make sure no one gets hurt.

“Cyclists and pedestrians are supposed to be able to treat it more like a plaza and just cross where they want to, and drivers are supposed to yield,” Duncan said.

As a street design scheme, shared space isn’t exactly new. It’s more or less the way all streets were designed until the advent of cars, and is still the norm in many Asian countries where cars share the roads with a crowd of two- and three-wheeled...

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program invites proposals for the 2014 Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowships. Fellowships up to $15,000 will be awarded to cover expenses for the recipient while working on their dissertation. NITC is focused on contributing to transportation projects that support innovations in: livability, incorporating safety and environmental sustainability

ELIGIBILITY

Students must be U.S. citizens and have advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree prior to the application deadline. NITC fellowships are open to students currently enrolled in a transportation-related doctoral program at Portland State University (PSU), University of Oregon (UO), Oregon Institute of Technology (Oregon Tech) or the University of Utah (UU).

PROCESS

Applicants must submit one electronic copy (in PDF) of their proposal to Susan Peithman (peithman@pdx.edu) by January 31st, 2014. More information can be found by downloading the application here: NITC Dissertation Application.

ABOUT

This grant is part of the University Transportation Center (UTC) program funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration. The mission of the UTC program is to advance U.S. technology and expertise in the many disciplines comprising transportation through...