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Photo set: OTREC at TRB
The Transportation Research Board's annual meeting lets OTREC resesarchers share their work with the rest of the country, network and learn from research conducted elsewhere. OTREC faculty, staff and students, with their ubiquitous yellow lanyards, hit Washington, D.C. for research presentations, poster sessions and committee meetings Jan. 21 to 26.
Tags: brian davis, carl olson, cortney mild, geoff rose, hau hagedorn, john macarthur, keith bartholomew, kelly clifton, kristi currans, marc schlossberg, miguel figliozzi, nathan mcneil, roger chen, roger lindgren, transportation research board, trb
Bike riding in the rain: Portland takes center stage at TRB annual meeting
When people talk about Portland, they talk about weather and bicycling. Judging by the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, D.C., researchers are looking into the same two things.
Bikes, of course, draw more interest at a transportation conference than in other circles. Here, Portland continues to draw attention: A single day’s poster session featured no less than seven papers that use Portland as a bicycle research laboratory.
The examination of bicycling and weather drew research looks from around the continent. A paper with authors from OTREC and the Institute of Transport Studies at Monash University, Australia, looked at how well different factors, including weather, affect bicycling in Portland, Ore., and Brisbane, Australia.
Light rain, for example, had little effect on bicycling in Portland, said Portland State University’s Miguel Figliozzi, one of the paper’s authors. The drop in ridership was four times as great in Brisbane on drizzly days.
“We’re used to light rain, so the difference is very small in Portland,” Figliozzi said. “In Australia, maybe they are not used to that.”
Geoffrey Rose of Monash University, another author on the paper, said the paper could help transportation decision makers understand and respond to effects of weather on active transportation, particularly as they deal with climate change. “This helps to understand the effects (of weather) on cycling today and what we can do to perhaps insulate people from those effects,” Rose said.
Tags: australia, bicycling, geoffrey rose, kelly clifton, mcgill university, miguel figliozzi, monash university, portland, roger chen, transportation research board
News from TRB: Making trip-generation models work for urban transportation
Planners looking to develop an dense mix of urban land uses often face a dilemma: they’re using trip-generation models that undercount the very trips on bicycle and foot that the planners encourage while paving the way for more driving.
Portland State University Associate Professor Kelly Clifton dove into the topic Monday, presenting a paper at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington D.C. Kristina Currans of PSU, April Cutter of Metro, and Robert Schneider of the University of California Berkeley are coauthors.
Clifton and other panelists agreed that the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ trip generation rates don’t adequately reflect actual trips in an urban area with multiple land uses and transportation modes. They differed on the remedy, however.
Presenting another paper, Associate Professor Kevan Shafizadeh of California State University Sacramento, evaluated and tested several complex methods, finding that none truly suits smart-growth development projects. However, Shafizadeh and his team found that every method tested does a better job at predicting the number of trips generated than the ITE rates.
We need to predict trips better, Clifton said, but perhaps a simpler solution exists. She acknowledged Shafizadeh’s conclusions that each alternative also had deficiencies in certain applications, and suggested that the ITE rates could be tweaked instead of scrapped entirely.
Tags: april cutter, kelly clifton, kristina currans, modeling, robert schneider, transportation research board, trip-generation rates
Innovative research from OTREC faculty, students on TRB conference agenda
Students and faculty researchers from OTREC universities will present 45 papers at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting Jan. 22 to 26 in Washington, D.C.
The papers, to be presented at 37 separate sessions and poster sessions, stem from transportation research at Portland State University, the University of Oregon and Oregon State University. The three universities will send 43 students to the conference.
Alex Bigazzi, a PSU engineering doctoral student, will present his work on topics including congestion and emissions at the conference. Some of that work stems from his master’s thesis, “Roadway Congestion Impacts on Emissions, Air Quality, and Exposure,” with adviser Miguel Figliozzi at PSU. The thesis won this year’s Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award, which will be presented Jan. 21 at the Council of University Transportation Centers awards banquet.
Bigazzi will present another paper, which he wrote with PSU’s Kelly Clifton and Brian Gregor of the Oregon Department of Transportation, that looks at fuel economy for alternative-fuel vehicles in congestion. Titled “Advanced Vehicle Fuel-Speed Curves for Regional Greenhouse Gas Scenario Analysis,” the paper helps Oregon DOT incorporate hybrid, electric and fuel-cell vehicles into its emissions planning model.
While traditional vehicles lose fuel efficiency during congested driving, advanced vehicles don’t suffer from the same effects, according to the paper. Some even do better in congestion than at higher speeds.
Tags: alex bigazzi, chris monsere, david hurwitz, greenhouse gas, kelly clifton, miguel figliozzi, transportation research board
USDOT awards $3.5 million to continue OTREC sustainable transportation research and programs
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Portland State University $3.5 million for research and education on sustainable transportation topics, the department announced today. The Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC), the university transportation center based at PSU, will administer the grant.
OTREC, a partnership between PSU, the University of Oregon and the Oregon Institute of Technology, will join with the University of Utah to carry out the grant. This award reaffirms OTREC’s evolution into one of the nation’s leading transportation livability research centers and provides the resources to address national problems strategically.
Research and educational programs under the grant will focus on the following topics:
- Improving health and safety for all users
- Increasing the efficiency and understanding of cycling, walking and transit
- Making the best use of data, performance measures and analytical tools
- Integrating multimodal transportation with land use
- Taking long-term action on transportation emissions and climate change.
PSU was one of 63 applicants for 22 grants. The grant competition challenged university transportation center leaders to demonstrate the ability and experience to produce the country’s best transportation research and educational programs. “In five years, OTREC has advanced the state of research on topics such as the connections between transportation and land use; intelligent transportation systems; and bicycle, pedestrian and transit infrastructure,” said OTREC Director Jennifer Dill. “This award recognizes that work while allowing us to focus deeper on pressing national problems.”
Tags: jeff merkley, jennifer dill, keith bartholomew, otrec, peter defazio, university of utah, usdot, utc, wim wiewel
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