National Institute for Transportation and Communities

The National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research consortium, led by Portland State University, has awarded $926,000 in total funding for eleven research projects spanning five universities.

The General Research grant is NITC's flagship grant. Annually, we fund general research through a competitive, peer-reviewed RFP process for projects ($30,000 - $150,000) consistent with our theme of improving the mobility of people and goods to build strong communities.

Four of these new projects involve multi-university collaboration, and seven are advancing the transportation knowledge base by building upon an existing body of research. The new group of projects will help lead the deployment of innovative new technologies and practices to improve the safety and performance of transportation systems:

Every year NITC offers Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowships which cover expenses for the recipient while working on a dissertation consistent with NITC's theme of improving the mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. 

Alexander Lee, a Graduate Research Assistant in Systems and Industrial Engineering at University of Arizona, is our 2017 NITC dissertation fellow has been funded to investigate his study on Using Time-Series Analysis to Precisely Identify and Rank Road Hotspots.

Over the past decades, many ranking methods have been proposed for "road hotspots". However, results vary from method to method, and one of the issues behind ranking is the element of subjectivity. One approach to resolve these issues is the use of combined models. One of the combined models is the Enhanced Empirical Bayesian (EB) method that incorporates the use of the similarity measure based on the Proportion Discordance Ratio (PDR). This model is developed to assess and objectively quantify similarity among road segments based on crash patterns, each of which contains a unique combination of selected crash-related features.

Our National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research program has awarded grant funding for a new series of Small Starts projects.

Small Starts grants assist researchers who are interested in transportation but have not yet had an opportunity to undertake a small project—$15,000 in funding or less—that supports NITC's theme of safe, healthy and sustainable transportation choices to foster livable communities.

The latest projects selected by NITC's executive committee support that theme in exploring livable streets, multimodal safety and transportation efficiency.

The six newly funded projects are:

• Is There a "Buy Local" Case for Lower Travel Speeds? Testing Differences in Driver Recognition of Local Versus National Retail at Different Travel Speeds—Jonathan Bean and Arlie Adkins, University of Arizona (Full Proposal)
• How Will Autonomous Vehicles Change Local Government Budgeting and Finance? A Case Study of Solid Waste, Drop-off/Pick-up Zones, and Parking—Benjamin Clark, University of Oregon (...