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Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 22 06 March 2017 1. City Moves Forward With Plan to Rent Adaptive Bikes as Part of Biketown System 2. News Release: Study Sparks Debate Over Relationship Between Compact Development and Driving 3. Behind the Scenery: The Subtle Art of Crafting Public Wilderness Trails 4. Online Seminar: Addressing Data Challenges for Bicycle Crash Analysis - Friday, March 10, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:00pm PST 5. SelectUSA Announces Availability of State Business Incentives Database 6. Rural Oregon Day 2017 – Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at The Oregon State Capitol, Salem 7. America’s Aging Dams Are in Need of Repair 8. Placemaking: Geek Niche or The Root of Pretty Much Everything?

9. Kendall Derby and Oregon's Juniper Industry on Think Out Loud 10. Learn About the Location Advantage in This Free Online Course 11. Poll Everywhere 1. City Moves Forward With Plan to Rent Adaptive Bikes as Part of Biketown System The City of Portland took another step today toward fulfilling a promise they made last summer: To make the Biketown bike share program more accessible to people who are unable to ride conventional bicycles.

Quote of the Week: "Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most." ~Siddhārtha Gautama Oregon Fast Fact: The world’s tallest barber shop pole stands in Forest Grove, Oregon.

If all goes according to plan, adaptive bikes should be available for use by this summer.

To refresh your memory, this issue caught the Portland Bureau of Transportation off-guard last summer, just weeks before the scheduled launch of the Biketown program, when a local advocate for people with disabilities began to question the equity of a bike share system that wasn’t accessible by all of Portland’s bicycle riders. That advocate was Chloe Eudaly, who notched a victory on this issue when PBOT promised to find a solution and then went on to earn a victory at the ballot box when she became a Portland City Commissioner.

To access the full report, click here.

2. News Release: Study Sparks Debate Over Relationship Between Compact Development and Driving Compact development is often recommended as a way to get people to drive less and create more sustainable communities. However, different studies over the years have yielded different outcomes, leading to a muddled understanding about the true impact of compact development. After using meta-aggression analysis, Mark R. Stevens of the University of British Columbia, concludes that planners should not rely on compact development as their only strategy for reducing driving, as it doesn’t have much of an impact.

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In the article, “Does Compact Development Make People Drive Less?” in the Journal of the American Planning Association (Vol. 83, No. 1), Stevens looks at nearly 20 years of research and the different outcomes from measuring changes to one of the five features of compact development referred to as the “D-variables” — density, diversity, design, destination accessibility, and distance to transit. He writes that his analysis is the first step in reducing the confusion generated from the multitude of studies and helps improve the understanding of compact development’s influence on driving.

To access this webinar series, click here.

3. Behind the Scenery: The Subtle Art of Crafting Public Wilderness Trails The U.S. National Trails System‘s 30 Scenic and Historic routes alone span over 50,000 miles, longer than the entire Interstate Highway System. Extending across all 50 states, the National Recreation Trails network contains over 200,000 additional miles of public pathways. A person could walk these trails continuously for years and still experience only a fraction of the total system.

Sustaining public trails throughout the nation is a herculean task coordinated by various federal agencies (including the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, USDA Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) as well as state-level organizations, like the California Conservation Corps (or: CCC). In turn, these agencies rely on a huge number of paid and volunteer workers to create and maintain both federal and state trails nationwide.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Online Seminar: Addressing Data Challenges for Bicycle Crash Analysis - Friday, March 10, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:00pm PST Although an increasing number of separated bicycle facilities have been appearing across the US over the last few years, the majority of bicyclists are still traveling on roadways shared with motorized vehicles.

As a result, bicycles are essentially double exposed to safety risk, due to their interactions with both motorized vehicles and other bicycles. In addition to this double exposure, data challenges–such as a lack of continuous counts and bicycle crash data—complicate the assessment of bicycle safety further.

This research presents a bicycle crash analysis framework for estimating bicycle crash rates accounting for both bicycle and motorized vehicle exposure as well as overcoming the lack of bicycle count data.

First, a novel seasonal bicycle demand model is presented that is capable of estimating monthly average daily bicyclists (MADB) and annual average daily bicyclists (AADB) using an area-specific calibration factor. This factor can be estimated using a minimum of two short-term counts or one full year of a continuous count.

The proposed sinusoidal model has been developed and validated using bicycle count data from a total of 47 permanent bicycle counters in six cities and four bike-sharing systems in North America.

Next, a corridor-based crash and AADB assignment is performed to relate crash with volume data.

These data are then used in parallel with motorized vehicle counts in a crash rate equation that accounts for exposure of bicyclists to both vehicles and other bicyclists.

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Results show that the proposed “double exposure” crash rate for bicyclists unveils high risk locations for bicyclists that would have been obscured by the high vehicle volumes if the typical crash rate per AADT or AADB were used.

Dr. Eleni Christofa is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UMass Amherst. Her research interests focus primarily on traffic operations and signal control, public transportation, and safety for non-motorized users. Her research has focused on the development of sustainable management strategies and geometric design that improve person mobility, air quality, and safety in urban multimodal transportation systems. Dr. Christofa is a member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Task Force on Arterials and Public Health, and a member and paper review coordinator of the TRB Traffic Signal Systems Committee. She is the author and coauthor of more than 40 technical papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. She was recently named the 2017 Transportation Research Board Outstanding Young Member. Dr. Christofa received her PhD and Masters in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds a Diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.

If you are live streaming and want to ask a question, send an email to psuseminar@yahoo.com during the broadcast.

Follow this link on the day of the seminar to stream it live.

5. SelectUSA Announces Availability of State Business Incentives Database The SelectUSA team has announced the launch of the State Business Incentives Database, a national database created by the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER). With almost 2,000 programs from all 50 states, DC, and federal agencies, the database gives economic developers, business development finance professionals, and economic researchers a convenient resource for searching and learning about state incentive programs.

For more information, click here.

6. Rural Oregon Day 2017 – Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at The Oregon State Capitol, Salem Let Your Voice Be Heard! Join the Oregon Rural Development Council (ORDC) and other rural leaders and stakeholders at the Oregon State Capitol on April 4, 2017, to share information about rural Oregon priorities with state leadership. Save the date - more details are coming soon!

About Rural Oregon Day: ORDC has worked with partners to organize Rural Oregon Day for more than ten years. Rural Oregon Day has served as a way for rural community residents, leaders, and advocates to raise awareness of rural issues, as well focus on key issues for consideration by the State Legislature and Governor.

For more information, click here.

7. America’s Aging Dams Are in Need of Repair After two weeks that saw evacuations near Oroville, Calif., and flooding in Elko County, Nev., America’s dams are showing their age.

Nearly 2,000 state-regulated high-hazard dams in the United States were listed as being in need of repair in 2015, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. A dam is considered “high hazard” based on the potential for the loss of life as a result of failure.

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By 2020, 70 percent of the dams in the United States will be more than 50 years old, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Placemaking: Geek Niche or The Root of Pretty Much Everything?

When I first developed my interest in placemaking twenty years ago it was driven by design. I was a brand advertising person which, by necessity, involves the study of behavior. Not just of people but of their context.

Where and how people choose to live, I learned, provided a lot of insight into the kinds of things advertisers care about. Circumstances. Values. Aspirations. The things people choose to buy to get through their everyday lives.

It doesn’t tell you everything, of course, and for every broad stroke there’s no shortage of individuals who defy the generalization. But still, when you’re observing people in the aggregate, there’s a lot of content there.

But here’s the rub: Observing the data of the 90s made a pretty compelling case that Americans were in love with suburban/exurban life by a ridiculous margin. Flat out crazy about it. And that’s where I hit a disconnect.

To access the full story, click here.

9. Kendall Derby and Oregon's Juniper Industry on Think Out Loud As part of Rural Development Initiative’s (RDI) WealthWorks Northwest program, supported by Meyer Memorial Trust, Northwest Area Foundation, and The Ford Family Foundation, RDI recently awarded business investment grants to help expand the juniper industry in Wheeler County. Grant recipient Kendall Derby, owner of In the Sticks Juniper Sawmill in Fossil, was recently interviewed on OPB's Think Out Loud where he spoke about the impact of the grant, plans for his small business, and the juniper industry overall.

To listen to this interview, click here.

10. Learn About the Location Advantage in This Free Online Course The Location Advantage is Esri's free, online course on location analytics and is ideal for business professionals who want to develop unique skills that will give them a competitive edge. It explores market planning, site selection, market analysis, and supply chain management.

Course Highlights • • •

Case studies from Starbucks, Bank of America, and other leaders in location analytics Hands-on exercises, quizzes, and discussions Certificate of completion to document your learning

The Location Advantage is a massive open online course (MOOC) and will run from April 12 to May 23, 2017. It requires only one to two hours of study per week. Register today and learn what location analytics can do for you To access this free online course, click here.

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11. Poll Everywhere On the surface, Poll Everywhere is a simple application that works well for live audiences using mobile devices like phones. People participate by visiting a fast mobile-friendly web page for your event, sending text messages, or using Twitter. Instructions are displayed on-screen. The poll that is embedded within the presentation or web page will update in real time. Advanced uses include texting comments to a presentation, texting questions to a presenter, web voting, and SMS interactivity in print, radio, and TV. And don’t forget RARE Members have access to the higher education plan price!

To access more information about this resource, click here.

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