TREC research addresses complex transportation problems by drawing on multiple disciplines, including engineering, planning, economics and design, from across the Portland State University campus. Use the search box at right to search for a specific project.
NOTE: If you're looking for projects from our partner campuses, use the NITC research search.
Research Highlights
Communicating Research through Comics: Transportation and Land Development
Kelly Clifton
Kristina Currans
This project created a transportation comic, "Moving From Cars To People," which offers a succinct and fun introduction to a complicated topic: namely, how the built environment in the United States came to be designed for cars and what we can do about it.
The comic includes a dialogue, taking place in various urban settings, between characters Kelly and Kristi who are based on the two principal investigators, Kelly Clifton and Kristina Currans. The two have a long history of collaboration...
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Exploring the positive utility of travel and mode choice
Patrick Singleton
Traditionally, travel is considered a disutility to be minimized, and travel demand is derived from activity demand. Recently, scholars have questioned these axioms, noting that some people may like to travel, use travel time productively, find other benefits in traveling, or travel for non-utilitarian reasons. These are instances of “the positive utility of travel” (PUT). In this dissertation, I conceptually and empirically investigate PUT, its determinants, and its impacts on travel behavio...
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