PacTrans Transportation Conference Helps Transportation Professionals Prepare For An Uncertain Future

The 2025 PacTrans Region 10 Transportation Conference was held at Portland State University on October 10, with attendees from all over the Pacific Northwest. The conference drew a mixture of transportation researchers and practitioners, with a theme of Connecting Communities: Improving Mobility under Uncertainty. David Zipper, Senior Fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, gave the lunchtime keynote address (a recording is available below). Following the keynote, he and TREC director Jennifer Dill led a discussion about what cities in America can do to ready themselves for an influx of autonomous vehicles on a large scale. The morning plenary address was delivered by Greg Griffin, professor of practice, architecture and planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Transportation Data Education: SQL Workshop

December 1–8, Online: Three days plus 1 bonus day

Join us for a multi-day online workshop on databases and SQL taught by TREC's Head of Programming and Development for PORTAL and BikePed Portal, Basem Elazzabi. 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 PORTAL data; and an introduction to to the underlying infrastructure of PORTAL, PSU's centralized data repository that is freely available to the public. Instructional days are December 1, 3, and 5, with one additional day on Monday, December 8 for those interested in extra help, practice problems, and follow-up.

Learn How To Perform Powerful Data Analysis Using BikePed Portal

BikePed Portal, the national non-motorized count data archive housed at Portland State University (PSU), provides a centralized standard bicycle and pedestrian count database which includes automated and manual counts from across the country. BikePed portal, as a paid service, also offers a suite of custom tools and products – with more features being developed all the time. The newest feature added to BikePed Portal is Explore Plus, a robust dashboard that allows users to conduct a wide range of data analyses. Follow along with this video tutorial to see how Explore + can help you do your job.

Portland State's E-Bike Lending Library is Open

The Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University (PSU) has four new e-bikes, thanks to a grant from the Portland General Electric (PGE) Drive Change Fund. We will be allowing PSU staff and faculty to use these e-bikes to try them for a period of time to commute, take home, and use the e-bikes for their daily needs. Participants will be asked to sign a liability waiver before receiving the e-bike. All participants will be offered a helmet, lock, charger, and access to a secured bike storage area on campus. If you are a PSU staff or faculty member and interested in checking out an e-bike for a couple of weeks, months, or a term, fill out a simple request form and enjoy trying out a new set of wheels!

Meet the 2025/2026 Portland State University Transportation Scholars

We're proud to celebrate Portland State University students who have received transportation scholarships for the 2025/26 academic year! Scholarships are awarded by the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at PSU, as well as by local transportation organizations. These awards reflect the excellence and impact of transportation students at PSU, whose work reaches beyond the classroom to impact the daily lives of real people in and around our region. Transportation scholarship recipients this year are Grace Alston, Zoe Beckley, Jesus Mendoza, Elias Peters, Niklas Roethig, and Gabriel Quiñones-Zambrana. Learn more about each scholarship winner below, and join us in congratulating these students on their outstanding accomplishments in transportation.

Earl Blumenauer Will Stop By Portland State University Booth at the Mpact Conference

October 27–28

Next week, Portland State University and TREC will have a booth in the Exhibit Hall of the Mpact: Building Transit-Oriented Communities Conference on Monday and Tuesday October 27th and 28th. The Mpact conference (formerly Rail~Volution) focuses on the interplay of transit, connected mobility options, land use and development in building great places to live. The exhibit will showcase PSU's research impacts in multimodal transportation and urban development. On Tuesday the 28th at 1:00 PM, former U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer will be at the booth ready to talk about PSU's future public impact research for our region, including the upcoming launch of the Institute for Metropolitan Studies (IMS). The TREC-cycle will also be there, so if you're attending the conference, be sure and come by the booth to learn more about what TREC is working on and to pick up your PSU swag!

Transportation Alumni Highlight: Afroza Hossain Misty, Class of 2024

Afroza Hossain Misty graduated from Portland State University in 2024 with a Masters of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) degree. She now works as an Associate Planner for the City of Columbia, South Carolina. During her time at PSU,  she was a student employee of PSU's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), where she contributed to transportation research projects by managing survey packaging, online data entry, and data validation processes. She also served as a Mayor Policy-Innovation Fellow for the City of Beaverton, Oregon in 2024.

TRANSPORTATION UPDATES

• Garrett Morgan Sustainable Transportation Competition: National contests for students in grades 1–12 from the Mineta Transportation Institute.
  • Poster contest (grades 1-6) submission deadline December 12, 2025
  • Essay contest (grades 6-12) submission deadline February 2, 2026
• Oregon DOT Announces Round 4 of Community Charging Rebate Program: The next round of financial support for charging infrastructure opens on November 6, 2025.
• October is National Pedestrian Safety Month: See the latest safety messaging from the U.S. DOT and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Portland State University's Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) is a multidisciplinary hub for all things transportation. We are home to the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI), the data programs PORTAL and BikePed Portal, the Better Block PSU program, and PSU's membership in PacTrans, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium. Our continuing goal is to produce impactful research and tools for transportation decision makers, expand the diversity and capacity of the workforce, and engage students and professionals through education, seminars, and participation in research.