Congratulations to Oren Eshel, OTREC's 2007 Student of the Year! Orenís interest in regional planning techniques drew him to Portland, where is he is a Master of Urban and Regional Planning graduate student at Portland State University. Oren embarked upon graduate study to focus on public transit, equity in provision of transit services, and regional planning. Oren is a research assistant in the Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab at PSU, and is working on a project to evaluate an adaptive ramp metering system in the Portland region. He is also an intern with the City of Portland’s Transportation Planning section. Oren was nominated by faculty for this award not only because he excels at research and in the classroom, but because he has made a significant mark on the multidisciplinary transportation program at PSU. Oren is President of the PSU transportation student group and ITE chapter (STEP) and coordinated the Fall 2007 Transportation Northwest District 10 Student Conference, which attracted over 70 students from across the region.
Professor Joseph Sussman, JR East Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the CTS seminar guest speaker and OTREC Visiting Scholar on March 9, 2007. Dr. Sussman has been instrumental in developing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in the US, and is the author of several books on the subject. Dr. Sussman met with engineering faculty to discuss OpenCourseWare, MIT's large-scale, web-based publication of course materials, and trends in civil engineering education. The PSU Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (STEP) Group hosted an interactive discussion with Professor Sussman which was followed by his seminar, Where Transportation in Going: Transportation in the CLIOS System Era. CLIOS is short for "Complex, Large-Scale, Interconnected, Open, Socio-technical Systems," and his presentation illustrated how complex transportation issues can be. After the seminar, ITS Oregon hosted a lunch in the ITS Lab for Dr. Sussman, ITS Oregon members, faculty and students.
The Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC) is pleased to announce the selection of its first Student of the Year, Max Coffman, who is a graduate research assistant in the ITS Lab. This national award was presented as part of the annual Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) Banquet at the Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in January 2007. For the past 15 years, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has honored an outstanding student from each University Transportation Center (UTC) at this special ceremony. Each student receives $1,000 plus the cost of attendance at TRB from his/her Center, and a certificate from USDOT. Criteria for this graduate student award include technical merit and research accomplishments, academic performance, professionalism and leadership. Shown (left to right) are OTREC Director Robert Bertini, Max Coffman, and former Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta.
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Steven Gehrke, Ph.D. Candidate, Portland State University
Topic: An Activity-related Land Use Mix Construct and Its Connection to Pedestrian Travel
Land use mix is a central smart growth principle connected to active transportation. This presentation describes the indicators of local land use mixing and their association with pedestrian travel in Oregon’s Willamette River Valley. It argues that land use mix is a multidimensional construct reflected by the complementarity, composition, and configuration of land use types, which is positively linked to walk mode choice and home-based trip frequency. Findings from this study underline the conceptual and empirical benefit of analyzing this transportation-land use interaction with a landscape pattern measure of activity-related composition and spatial configuration.
Steven Gehrke is a Ph.D. candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Portland State University. His research examines the transportation-land use interaction,...
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The PSU Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program is known for its workshop projects. For the last two quarters of the program, students work on community-based, client-focused projects. This provides students with the opportunity to work in teams on real-world...
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