Student Spotlight | National Institute for Transportation and Communities

Conference puts students at heart of transportation system

Nov 30, 2011

In town to network and share research results, participants in the Region X Student Transportation Conference also saw the inner workings of the transportation system and even got to stop Portland traffic.

The ninth annual conference drew around 75 people to Portland November 18. The conference showcases student transportation research in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska and is entirely organized and run by students.

This year, the conference also featured breakout sessions and tours with working transportation professionals. Groups visited the Oregon Department of Transportation Region I incident management command center, dug into city of Portland traffic signal systems and operations, toured the city’s bicycle infrastructure and explored the mechanics of Portland’s drawbridges in detail with three bridge lifts.

Portland State University’s student group, Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning, or STEP, hosted the conference, which was sponsored by OTREC. The conference provides plenty of formal and informal opportunities for students working at different universities to inform each other, said Kristi Currans, an organizer with STEP.

“My favorite part is just having all the students get together and find out all the research everyone is doing,” Currans said. “Even within Portland State, if people are working for different professors, I might not know what they’re working on.”

The conference drew students from Portland State...

MURP Students Present Planning Projects

Jun 05, 2011

Every year, graduate and undergraduate students from Portland State University’s Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning perform projects to aid urban planning efforts in local communities. On Tuesday, May 31, several students from PSU’s Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program took to the podium to present what they had accomplished after nearly six months of hard work.

When Amy Hesse, a graduate student in the MURP program, traveled to Redmond to learn more about efforts to encourage bicycling in the eastern Oregon community, she found plenty of people interested biking. But she also found that many were not doing so because they felt unsafe. Hesse, along with students April Cutter, Reza Farhoodi and Spencer Williams, developed a project called B-Spoke which sought to create a bicycle refinement plan for the city of Redmond.

“Our goal was to build off the city’s existing transportation system plan by identifying assets and barriers to increased ridership,” said Hesse. “People told me, ‘I don’t feel safe’ and we looked for new ways to overcome that. It wasn’t so much telling (Redmond locals) what they should do, but seeing what we could learn from them.”

While Redmond had many assets to cycling, including existing bike trail systems, a lack of east-west connectivity and dangerous highway crossings prevented many from biking more frequently, or at all, outside of recreation. Women were the gender with the most interest in cycling, but...

New Chicago Transportation Department head will bring lessons from Oregon trip

Apr 20, 2011

When Gabe Klein starts his new job as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation, the lessons of Oregon’s transportation system will be fresh in his mind. Klein, the former director of the District (of Columbia) Department of Transportation, visited OTREC programs and student groups over several packed days in Oregon.

Klein started his tour April 6 in Eugene as an expert in residence with the Sustainable Cities Initiative and LiveMove student group at the University of Oregon. He worked his way up the Willamette Valley with meetings and presentations in Salem and Portland.

On bicycle, Klein toured Eugene’s off-street paths, including pedestrian and bicycle bridges, and the street that will carry the area’s first cycle track. He met with city and Lane Transit District officials before touring the EmX bus rapid transit system....

8th Annual Region X Student Conference Draws 70 to Corvallis

Feb 23, 2011

The 8^th Annual Region X Student Conference was hosted by Oregon State University in Corvallis on Friday and 70 students attended. Conference organizer Jon Mueller said that a surprising number of students from the materials science and economics departments attended and that a significant number of undergraduates from OSU attended parts of the conference.

The conference featured a morning keynote presentation by Galen McGill, manager of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) unit for the Oregon DOT. The students learned about Oregon’s efforts to confront the challenge of scarce financial resources by applying technology to increase the productivity of existing infrastructure. Galen touched on recent advances in technologies such as OnStar and strategies such as Active Traffic Management, which has been adopted in Seattle and will soon be deployed in Oregon.

The late morning and early afternoon showcased student research. Eight students gave lecture-style presentations in the late morning and there was so much interest and so many questions that the session ran late and into the scheduled lunch hour. The presentations – four from PSU and four from OSU – revealed similar research interests between the campuses. The poster session in the afternoon provided a less structured forum in which the participants could interact.

The later afternoon offered students 3 workshops to attend. The group was divided into three subsets, each workshop was...

Guest column: Lessons learned from TRB

Feb 03, 2011

Brian Davis, a transportation engineering student at Portland State University, was one of 47 students from OTREC campuses to attend the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. He shares the following thoughts, tips and cautions for future attendees, students and professionals:

I’m finally back in Portland from my first go-round at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board. Aside from some kerkuffles flying in and out, due in small part to snow and in much larger part to the incompetence of American Airlines (maybe all their good operations people were, you know, at the conference!), it was a terrific, invaluable experience.

By the end of the second day of the conference, it became clear to me that the biggest takeaway from this meeting would be what to do differently next time. In talking to some of the TRB veterans meandering about the meeting, it seems like that’s a pretty common experience from one’s first TRB conference. Here, then, are a few thoughts about what I’m going to do differently next time, and a pat or two on the back for the few instances that I guessed right.

The devil fools with the best laid plans

In the days and weeks leading up to the meeting, I agonized for hours and hours trying to plan the perfect assortment of sessions and presentations to attend. By the time the meeting started, I thought I had a wonderful experience planned where I’d get to...

Transit stations operate in sweet microenvironment

Dec 06, 2010

Even residents of a gingerbread candyland can't get around with holiday magic alone. After all, Santa's elves still need a reliable way to get from their cozy homes to the workshop.

Sadly, transportation planners have turned a frosty shoulder to sugar-based transit systems. Until now.

On Dec. 3, Portland State University's Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning held the first gingerbread transit station competition. Four teams of students pulled their attention away from human transit to focus on the needs of gingerbread people and misfit toys.

Dealing with building materials of unknown structural properties, students field engineered solutions. Licorice sticks stood in for steel rails, candy canes for bicycle racks. For a binding agent, students mixed cream of tartar and egg whites instead of portland cement.

The resulting transit system has already resulted in fewer traffic gum-ups and a drastic reduction in ultrafine powdered-sugar emissions. Sleigh-travel-time reliability has also improved.

Researchers are now assessing the durability of corn-syrup-reinforced composites in candy bridges, the potential for alkali-silica reaction in gingerbread pavement and the possibility that someone hungry will stumble in and eat the infrastructure.

The winning design team was Transit Wonderland, composed of Jesse Boudart, Sara Morrissey, Mark Haines and Meeyonwoo Lim.

Portland State students win Traffic Bowl, Oregon Tech takes third

Nov 23, 2010

Portland State University’s Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning took first place in the Oregon Institute of Transportation Engineers’ William C. Kloos Traffic Bowl, held Nov. 18 at McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale. The Oregon Institute of Technology’s ITE student chapter won third place.

Portland State’s victory at the 19^th annual Traffic Bowl was its second in a row. The PSU team also finished third in the 2008 competition.

The Jeopardy-style tournament tests students on their knowledge of transportation engineering and history with a sprinkling of arcane facts and pop culture thrown in for good measure. Teams from Oregon State University, the University of Portland and the University of Washington also participated with the University of Portland placing second.

UO's Briana Orr honored with Civic Engagement Award for Bike Loan Program Leadership

Apr 22, 2009

Briana Orr, UO undergraduate and co-founder of the Universityís Bike Loan Program, is being recognized at the Oregon Civic Engagement Awards with the 2009 Faith Gabelnick Student Leadership Award. The awards reception is being held on Thursday, 4/23 in Portland. Ms. Orr is an environmental studies and Planning, Public Policy and Management major. From a story in the UOís Daily Emerald, a few facts about the bike loan program: it was started in the fall of 2008 with about 70 unclaimed bikes in the Public Safety departmentís impound storage. For a $65 refundable deposit, a student can check out a bike (lock, lights, fenders and basket included) for a term or an entire year. The award is being given by the Oregon chapter of Campus Compact, a national coalition of over 1,100 college and university presidents dedicated to promoting service-learning, civic engagement, and community service in higher education.

OTREC Announces Christo Brehm 2008 Transportation Student of the Year

Nov 04, 2008

Christo Brehm, University of Oregon, is currently pursuing a concurrent graduate degree in Community and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon. He holds an undergraduate degree in Planning, Public Policy and Management and has spent many years working in the field of affordable housing. While a University of Oregon student, Christo has designed one of the nation's first assessment tools of the emerging "Complete Streets" concept. He has traveled across the country (MD, VA, and MN) leading community assessment workshops using this Complete Streets tool that works within a mobile GIS environment. Christo co-authored a paper for the 2009 TRB national conference and has presented his work at the national Pro Bike / Pro Walk conference. He has been asked by leaders in two Oregon state agencies to describe and share his work with smaller Oregon communities and is a founding member and director of a campuswide, interdisciplinary transportation and livability student group at the University of Oregon called LiveMove. During this time, Christo has worked with Dr. Marc Schlossberg and has been a truly exceptional student researcher and leader. Congratulations Christo!

OTREC Participation in TRB 87th Annual Meeting

Jan 11, 2008

Oregon was well-represented at the Transportation Research Boardís 87th Annual Meeting, January 13-17, 2008 in Washington, D.C. More than 15 faculty participated and presented research in numerous poster sessions and workshops and served as presiding officers for various sessions, committees and subcommittees. In addition, we are pleased that more than 20 students also attended, many of them presenting research work in poster and regular sessions. OTREC staff attended the annual meeting of the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC), and the 2007 OTREC Student of the Year, Oren Eshel, was recognized at the CUTC banquet. In addition, OTREC and the Region X UTCs (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington) hosted a reception at the beginning of the conference week. A summary of OTREC faculty and student participation can be found here: TRB 2008.

The devil fools with the best laid plans

Pages