Just one of the “startlingly democratic” poster sessions.
(Photo: Aaron Brown/BikePortland)

Welcome to the latest dispatch from our Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting Special Correspondent Aaron Brown, who was in D.C. covering the event thanks to sponsorship from the Transportation Research and Education Center at Portland State University (TREC at PSU). See past coverage here. (Note: Views expressed by the author are his own and do not reflect those of TREC at PSU.)

Transit equity

Aaron Golub’s presentation was one of my personal highlights of the conference. I attended a seminar in which Dr. Golub, a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning and the Director of the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, shared findings from his ongoing research about the equity implications of TriMet’s shift towards electronic fares. His presentation, “An Equity Assessment of Smart Mobility Systems in Portland, Oregon”, was featured in a session titled, “Taking Off the Rose-Colored Glasses: Equitable Access to 21st-Century Mobility Options”.
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I couldn’t resist.
(Photos: Aaron Brown)

Welcome to the latest dispatch from our Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting Special Correspondent Aaron Brown, who’s in D.C. covering this event thanks to a funding partnership with the Transportation Research and Education Center at Portland State University (TREC at PSU). See past coverage here.

New Modes, New Research, New Challenges, New Opportunities

As TRB gears up to celebrate its centennial (a detail that conference organizers are eager to mention as many times as possible), it’s hard not to pick up the infectious enthusiasm and energy surrounding the exciting new fields of academic research and inquiry. As recently as a decade or two ago, academic inquiry on bicycles as transportation options were limited to a handful of specific universities across the country. Now, virtually every up-and-coming transportation planning student is well-versed (and frequently seeking a career in) active transportation, and the role it plays in designing communities.
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Portland resident and renowned transit expert Jarrett Walker at the lectern.
(Photos: Aaron Brown)

As we shared yesterday, BikePortland correspondent Aaron Brown is at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. thanks to a funding partnership with the Transportation Research and Education Center at Portland State University. Here’s his first dispatch…
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Aaron Brown.

This is the second of a two-part article by Aaron Brown, founder of No More Freeways PDX and former board president of Oregon Walks. The first part is here.

So, candidly, if freeway expansion is so obviously detrimental to the TriMet’s goals and ability to provide service to the region, why has TriMet supported it? Urban scholar Jacob Arbinder wrote in Democracy Journal last month about the bumbling, abysmal state of transportation governance in cities like New York and Boston. The piece is worth reading at length; he identifies the problem as a “broken political economy,” which is a fancy, academic way of stating that transit agencies suffer from a dearth of adequate democratic mechanisms for community input and budgetary accountability.
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This two-part article is by Aaron Brown, founder of No More Freeways PDX and former board president of Oregon Walks.
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