People on e-scooters

Over $1M in Research Funding for New Projects on Micromobility, TOD’s, and Equity in Transportation Access

Jul 10, 2019

The National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research consortium, led by Portland State University, has awarded $1.035 million in total funding for ten research projects spanning five universities. This year we focused funding on micromobility, traffic, meeting the transportation needs of underserved populations and people with disabilities, and the intersection of transportation and housing.

Led by Reid Ewing of the University of Utah, Nicole Iroz-Elardo and Arlie Adkins of the University of Arizona
 
Led by Yao-Jan Wu of the University of Arizona, Xianfeng Yang of the University of Utah and Sirisha Kothuri of Portland State University
This multi-university collaboration builds upon previous research led by Yao-Jan Wu in multi-modal traffic monitoring, as well as...
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Researchers at TRB

Developing Tools for Social Workers, Engineers, and Planners to Address Mobility Gaps Collaboratively

Apr 04, 2019
Principal Investigator: Noelle Fields, University of Texas, Arlington
Learn more about this research by viewing the Executive Summary and the full Final Report on the Project Overview page, or watching a recording of the February 2018 webinar.

The latest NITC report explores strengthening collaboration between disciplines, to build a transportation system that better serves everyone.

Transportation planners and engineers often struggle to serve at-risk communities and environmental justice (EJ) populations. EJ populations can include older adults, people with low income, low socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic minorities, and individuals with disabilities—all groups who are at an increased risk for transportation disadvantage. Evidence of these struggles manifest as unequal transportation system outcomes related to access and opportunity.

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Pedestrians cross near a light rail amid mixed-use development

NITC Invites Submissions for 2019 General Research RFP

Mar 05, 2019

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2019 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by March 29, 2019.

Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award up to $1,000,000 to research projects that support NITC’s theme: improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. Our theme includes a few key topics:

  • Increasing access to opportunities
  • Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure
  • Advancing innovation and smart cities
  • Developing data, models, and tools

2019 RESEARCH PRIORITIES

The NITC Advisory Board has provided input into several research priorities that relate to multimodal transportation data and the transportation-land use-housing connection. NITC is prioritizing the funding of proposals that directly addresses research questions related to:

Developing Data, Models and Tools. Agencies are confronting a plethora of new mobility options along with new data sources to support transportation research, planning, and analysis. Several priority research areas have been identified to increase understanding: 

  • Collection of multimodal data...
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NITC Dissertation Fellow - Erin Roark Murphy of University of Texas at Arlington

Student Spotlight: Erin Roark Murphy, University of Texas at Arlington

Mar 04, 2019

Erin Roark Murphy, University of Texas at Arlington

Erin Roark Murphy, LMSW, is a doctoral student in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). She is a NITC student scholar and has worked as a graduate research assistant on several NITC-funded projects, including "Evaluating Improved Transit Connections for Ladders of Opportunity" and "How Can Interdisciplinary Teams Leverage Emerging Technologies to Respond to Infrastructure Needs? A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of Civil Engineers, Urban Planning, and Social Workers’ Perspectives."

LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

Tell us about yourself?

I am in the third year of my PhD program at UTA in the School of Social Work. My personal research focuses on looking at homelessness...

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The NITC Guide to the 2019 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Conference

Jan 03, 2019

This page serves as a homebase for our coverage of the 2019 Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual conference. Check back here for ongoing updates, as well as our Twitter and Facebook.

  • NITC GUIDE TO TRB (PDF): Our printable schedule of where all of our NITC researchers will be presenting at lectures, poster sessions, and workshops

  • NITC RECEPTION AT TRB: Join us for transportation bingo and networking on Tuesday, January 15 (7:30–10:30pm) nearby at Fado Irish Pub

  • NITC STUDENT AWARD AT CUTC BANQUET: We’ll be celebrating our 2018 NITC “Student of the Year,"  Travis Glick of Portland State University, at the annual CUTC Banquet. Travis is a NITC scholar and graduate research assistant, and will present work in three TRB sessions.

MULTI-UNIVERSITY COLLABORATIVE PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS:

    ...
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Orange bicycle

Three New "Small Starts" in Transportation Projects Receive $60,000 in NITC Funding

Nov 14, 2018

The latest Small Starts Grant projects, selected by NITC's executive committee, will explore equitable access to mobility options, communicating the applied value of GPS data to agencies, and transportation resiliency in natural disasters.

This annual NITC funding program is a unique opportunity to tackle small-scale ($20,000 or less in scope) research projects. In contrast to our larger, annual flagship program ($30–150K), Small Starts enables us to include researchers who:

  • Bring a diverse, interdisciplinary perspective and may not have considered applying a transportation lens to their work before.
  • Offer a new voice in the field, whether they’re untenured faculty or a researcher who has not received a NITC grant before.
  • Seek to kick-start a larger project by first tackling an exploratory study smaller in scope.
THE NEW PROJECTS

The new projects represent a mix of topics and disciplines across our partner campuses, aimed at supporting and advancing mobility with a focus on creating equitable transportation options. These projects total $60,000 in funding for this round.

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Automatic bicycle counter showing how many cyclists have passed today, and this year.

NITC Researchers Will Fuse Multiple Data Sources to Count Bikes

Nov 01, 2018
Principal Investigator:  Sirisha Kothuri, Portland State University
Learn more about this research by reading about the Pooled Fund research grant that started it, or the Project Overview page.

BIKE/PED COUNT SURVEY: CALL FOR INPUT

Researchers at Portland State University, University of Texas at Arlington, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Toole Design Group are conducting a scan to identify locations where bicycle counts are taking place around North America, and hope to enlist your help! If you collect bike count data (or oversee counts) in your jurisdiction, please consider taking our quick survey to tell us a little bit about your count locations and data.

The survey can be accessed here: tinyurl.com/BikeCounterScan

THE NEW PROJECT

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People talking and looking at materials in a workshop

Celebrating our 10th annual Transportation & Communities with Deep Dive Workshops

Sep 20, 2018

We held our annual flagship professional development event, Transportation & Communities, on September 13 and 14. In honor of the event's ten-year anniversary, we changed up the format: Rather than a typical conference with one-hour sessions and a keynote gathering, we offered a selection of intensive half-day workshops. See photos from the event.

The workshops gave practitioners a chance to take a deep dive into new skills in order to walk away with new tools or frameworks that could be applied to their work. We offered a review of congestion mitigation strategies, universal access and equity in pedestrian planning, and discussion on how smart technology could be implemented in suburban communities. Several workshops were based on findings from new research by the National Institute for...

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Left: Bicycles on a trail; Right: Young woman buying transit pass

2018 RFP for Two Pooled Fund Projects: Exploring Data Fusion Techniques for Bicycle Volumes & Equity in “Cashless” Transit Fares

Aug 22, 2018

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is soliciting proposals for our two 2018 Pooled Fund projects:

RFP now open; proposals due Oct 1, 2018

This project will address the need of cities and municipalities to combine bicycle data from different sources (such as manual counts, automatic counts, and crowd-sourced data from apps such as Strava) to assess an accurate accounting of bicycle traffic on a network. Current work on data fusion techniques is limited and additional research is needed to fully understand the choice of weighting techniques, inclusion of spatial vs. temporal variation in the...

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Student Spotlight: ITE Student Chapter President Sheida Khademi, University of Texas at Arlington

Jul 24, 2018

Sheida Khademi, University of Texas at Arlington

ITE Student Chapter | LinkedIn

Tell us about yourself:

I was born and raised in Iran, and I have experienced many restrictions that exist for women. My role model has been my mother; she played a pivotal role in helping me overcome challenges in achieving my goals. My family has always valued a good education and we have a deep belief in the power of women to find their way in society. I achieved a top 1% score in one of the most competitive and demanding schools in my country, in a male-dominated major. During my undergraduate years, I found that I have a deep interest in research, with a strong motivation and aptitude for it. I started my master’s degree in transportation engineering at University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) in Fall 2015, and started my PhD in the Fall 2017 semester.

What...

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