National Institute for Transportation and Communities

How can relocating homeless services away from a downtown center change transportation patterns for people experiencing homelessness? Researchers Sarah Canham, Jeff Rose, Shannon Jones, Alannah Clay and Ivis Garcia of the University of Utah (UU) have published an article in the September 2022 issue of Health & Social Care in the Community.

The article, "Community perspectives on how decentralising an emergency shelter influences transportation needs and use for persons experiencing homelessness," offers evidence to support the need for no-cost transportation options for persons experiencing homelessness.

The findings draw on the ongoing project Understanding the Impact of Decentralizing Homeless Services on Transportation and Mobility in Salt Lake County, funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC).

Despite steady increases in homelessness in the U.S., only recently has research on transportation needs for persons experiencing homelessness been the focus of research endeavours. To fill this gap in the literature, the research team conducted a qualitative study in which 24 professionals working in planning, transportation, local government, and the homelessness services sector were engaged in in-depth, semi-structured interviews.

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How can community members become more engaged in transportation decision making?

Individuals and groups can learn to effect powerful change, but success requires some familiarity with how civic processes work. Community Transportation Academies, or CTAs, provide a basic technical understanding of how a city or region’s transportation system operates, along with the decision makers and decision-making processes that determine how the system is shaped.

Supported by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), the new Wasatch Transportation Academy (WTA) at the University of Utah was piloted in 2022 in the Salt Lake City region. The research team developed a course vision, topics, and logistics for the WTA by interviewing stakeholders in the Utah Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, the Utah Department of Transportation, the Utah Transit Authority, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, and the Wasatch Front Regional Council. Led by Nathan McNeil of Portland State University and Keith Bartholomew of the University of Utah, the WTA used the established Portland Traffic and Transportation class in Portland, Oregon as a framework. 

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The video begins at 3:47.

Abstract: Transportation planning for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games— Vancouver’s largest special event ever—was a complex challenge compounded by venue security road closures throughout the city. Through public engagement, careful planning and evaluation, and collaboration with transportation partners, the City of Vancouver developed a wide range of innovative strategies to create its Host City Olympic Transportation Plan. By almost every indicator, the transportation operations and transportation demand management (TDM) strategies of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games were an unqualified success. However, the goals of the Host City transportation plan were further verified the Host City Olympic Transportation Plan Downtown Monitoring Study in partnership with the University of British Columbia (UBC) to evaluate the transportation impact of the Games by using in-the-field data collection. The transportation legacy of the Host City Olympic Transportation Plan was a proven example of a large scale travel behaviour shift to sustainable modes, in unprecedented and record numbers.  The experience of the Host City Olympic Transportation Plan demonstrated that residents and businesses can be motivated to take sustainable modes of transportation if convenient alternatives to vehicle travel are available. This presentation will discuss the detailed results of the Host City Olympic Transportation...

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