Economic and Business Outcomes of Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvements

Webinar: Economic and Business Outcomes of Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvements

 

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

The National Street Improvements Study, conducted by PSU in conjunction with PeopleForBikes and consulting firm Bennett Midland, researched the economic effects of bicycle infrastructure on 14 corridors across six cities — Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Memphis, Minneapolis and Indianapolis. The study found that improvements such as bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure had either positive or non-significant impacts on the local economy as measured through sales and employment. In this webinar, lead researcher Jenny Liu will share the results of the investigation and the unique methodology for investigating these economic outcomes.

THE RESEARCH

This webinar is based on a study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and the Summit Foundation, and conducted at Portland State University. Read more about the research: ...

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Transportation Data Education: SQL Workshop

Join us for a three day introductory in-person workshop on databases and SQL

June 17, 18, and 20, 1:00 pm - 4:30 pm

Each day will be a combination of a lecture and practical. We will cover:

  • Introduction to relational databases.
  • Structured query language (SQL).
  • How to setup a PostgreSQL database on your local machine and use it to analyze data.

Software Requirements

You will be expected to bring your own laptop and have all required software installed prior to the workshop. If you are using a work-issued laptop, you will most likely need administrator privileges to install the following required software:

REGISTRATION

General: $325
Non-profit and community-based organizations: $125
PSU Students: $10 

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This three-day workshop is eligible for 9 hours of professional...

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TRB Showcase of Portland State University student research in transportation: Part 1

The video begins at 4:13.

Wei Feng: Impacts of Economic, Technological and Operational Factors on the Economic Competitiveness of Electric Commercial Vehicles in Fleet Replacement Decisions

Electric commercial vehicles (ECV) have the potential to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and pollution in urban areas. In addition, ECVs have lower per-mile operating costs and potentially lower maintenance costs. However, the initial purchase cost of ECVs is significantly higher than the purchase cost of a conventional diesel vehicle. From a purely economic perspective, there is a cost tradeoff between the low operating and maintenance costs of ECVs and their high initial capital costs.  In this paper, a fleet replacement optimization framework is employed to analyze the competitiveness of ECVs. Scenarios with different fleet utilization, fuel efficiency and sensitivity analysis of ten additional factors indicate that ECVs are more cost effective when conventional diesel vehicles’ fuel efficiency is low (8.2 miles/gallon) and daily utilization is more than 54 miles. Breakeven values of some key economic and technological factors that separate the competitiveness between ECVs and conventional diesel vehicles are calculated in all scenarios. For example, in low conventional diesel vehicle fuel efficiency and low daily utilization scenario, ECVs are more competitive when their purchase prices...

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Travel Time Reliability; Pedestrian Crossing Behavior

Two MURP presentations

The video begins at 4:15.

PSU study finds bike lanes have potential to improve business

Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike

The video begins at 0:34.

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Speaker: Joseph Broach, Ph.D. Candidate, Portland State University
Topic: Trick or Treatment? Impact of Route-Level Features on Decisions to Walk or Bike
Summary: Some travel routes attract people walking and cycling, while others may scare them away. What features of street environments are most important, and how do available routes affect decisions to bike or walk on a specific trip? 

Research to date has focused on either large-scale areal measures like "miles of bike lane nearby" or else has considered only shortest path routes. Neither method is suited to capturing the impact of targeted route-level policies like neighborhood greenways. This session will present a new technique for measuring bike and walk accessibility along the most likely route for a given trip. The method is applied to travel data, and results provide new insight into the relationship between route quality and travel mode choice.

PSU Researchers Among Top in the World

Portland's Cycle Track and Buffered Bike Lanes: Are they working?

The video begins at 2:04.

Abstract: Findings will be presented on an evaluation of two innovative bicycle facilities installed in late summer and early fall 2009 in downtown Portland aimed at providing a more separated and comfortable experience for cyclists. The SW Broadway cycle track (near PSU) and the couplet of buffered bike lanes on SW Stark and SW Oak were evaluated to understand how they are functioning on multiple levels. Each facility involved removing a motor vehicle lane by restriping to provide additional roadway space to bicyclists. The facilities were evaluated after they had been in place for approximately one year. Data collected to support this evaluation consisted of surveys of multiple user groups for each facility type, and video data collected by the City of Portland Bureau of Transportation at intersections along each of the routes to understand the facilities' impact on traffic flow, operations and user interactions.

Bicycle & Pedestrian Overcrossings; Carsharing Payment Integration

Two MURP presentations

The video begins at 3:53.

Webinar: Exploring Data Fusion Techniques to Derive Bicycle Volumes on a Network

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

OVERVIEW

Planners and decision makers have increasingly voiced a need for network-wide estimates of bicycling activity. Such volume estimates have for decades informed motorized planning and analysis but have only recently become feasible for non-motorized travel modes.

Recently, new sources of bicycling activity data have emerged such as Strava, Streetlight, and GPS-enabled bike share systems. These emerging data sources have potential advantages as a complement to traditional count data, and have even been proposed as replacements for such data, since they are collected continuously and for larger portions of local bicycle networks. However, the representativeness of these new data sources has been questioned, and their suitability for producing bicycle volume estimates has yet to...

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