Sustainable City Year Reports 2018-19 (Eugene and Gresham)

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Browsing Sustainable City Year Reports 2018-19 (Eugene and Gresham) by Author "Clark, Benjamin"

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    New Mobility in Gresham: Recommendations and Guidelines
    (University of Oregon, 2019-09) Dangal, Agraj; Clark, Benjamin
    The purpose of this report is to provide an approach for the City of Gresham to evaluate data requirements prior to entering into contracts with emerging technology vendors. Four subgroups of new mobility vendors were identified and evaluated based on case studies and previous data requirements: e-scooters, bike-share programs, transportation network companies (TNCs), and autonomous vehicles. It is recommended that the City move forward with e-scooters, bike-share programs, and autonomous vehicles with robust data procurement strategies and policies. E-scooters and bike-share programs have the potential to be extremely successful in the city of Gresham if the City models potential data procurement standards after the City of Portland’s e-scooter program and the City of Seattle’s bike-share program. The collection of rider datasets and performance measures may be used as descriptive metrics as well as relational to external criteria, such as maintenance records and fleet tracking. These measures are critical to ensuring operationalization and viability of the programs. We recommend not contracting with TNCs until company behavior is more transparent and conducive to a public/private partnership with shared data and community-focused objectives. The City of Gresham does not currently have provisions for TNCs or taxis within the city, meaning drastic changes would need to occur in order for a contract to be developed. Furthermore, if TNCs were to be in place, internal controls and oversight committees are both highly recommended due to the reluctance of TNCs to release passenger datasets and a lack of current regulation. Gresham should consider treating autonomous vehicles the same as TNCs with extra precautions in place regarding passenger and pedestrian safety. Because autonomous vehicles are an emerging technology, we recommend specific regulations be put into place related to liabilities and insurance. Furthermore, if the City of Gresham were to move forward with autonomous vehicle contracts, it is encouraged to include passenger and application programming interface (API) data as a requirement for all private stakeholders involved. Public managers strive to maintain accountability to their constituents even though programs are contracted out, therefore contracts and communication with companies should be clearly outlined. All contracts, prior to beginning a pilot program, should have clear objectives as to how they are contributing to the City’s overarching transportation goals regarding sustainability, safety, and public/private partnerships.
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    Open Data Policies and Management in Eugene
    (University of Oregon, 2019-09) Dangal, Agraj; Ault, Sam; Burdette, Eric; Cobb, Arron; Rhodewalt, Amelia; Clark, Benjamin
    This report covers the City of Eugene’s current data management process with an emphasis on parking policies, including recommendations to improve the way the City collects, uses, and stores data. Upon interviewing department managers, students discovered that the City currently has no open data plan to engage the public and local businesses in orchestrating the kind of changes the City would like to see. The interview uncovered that City management desires to move into a co-production and citizen science-based process. The City is currently trying something similar to this type of data collection, called Vision Zero. Vision Zero was made available to the public in October 2016, but it has collected only forty-three data points to date. The program was launched without a marketing campaign, and appears to go unused by most citizens. Factors that contributed to the lack of an open data management plan included the overwhelming amount of data being collected monthly, incompatibility between legacyfrom not having a clear way to handle the sharing of data with potential stakeholders, to not having an easy way to respond to public records requests, to not having a clear understanding of what citizens want to see regarding changes in how they navigate and use space within the city. After concluding a literature review, assessing the implementation of Vision Zero, and considering the desire of city management to move toward an open data plan, it is our recommendation that the City consider launching a major marketing campaign highlighting Vision Zero. It is also the opinion of this workgroup that the City move toward a more structured data management system using an informal records request system where data is freely available for download on a City website. This data should be processed to remove any private information prior to being made available for download. Finally, this workgroup recommends that the City consider expanding its workforce to accommodate the needs of this new platform. systems and current systems, and no uniform system or protocol for storing and sharing data in a meaningful way. Problems that have resulted from not having an open data plan varied
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    Transportation Policy Options: New Mobility Services and Autonomous Vehicles
    (University of Oregon, 2019-09) Duffey, Stacie; Park, Grace; Thomas, Michael; Clark, Benjamin
    The cities of Eugene and Gresham want policy recommendations to prepare for the future of new mobility services and autonomous vehicles (AVs). Both cities hope to integrate these new policies into their Transportation System Plans (TSPs). This report provides practical new mobility policy options for each city to consider from eight priority topics: safety, equity, land use, innovation, environmental impact, congestion and vehicle miles traveled (VMT), active transportation, and data. Policy recommendations were created based on our research findings that included a literature review, analysis of other cities’ TSPs, and interviews we conducted with transportation professionals across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. The data from all three sources helped inform new mobility best practices presented in this report. The literature pointed mostly to concerns with uncertainty and possible unintended consequences of new mobility services and AVs. Some examples include minimal improvements to carbon emissions, public health concerns, and major infrastructure changes needed to accommodate the future of transportation. The findings from our interviews suggest that data requirements and privacy, equity, safety, land use, and innovation were the topics of highest priority in the field. Consequently, we developed more policy recommendations for those areas of interest. We found that many policies nationwide are in pilot stages and have the potential to be changed at any moment. Review of other cities’ TSPs also helped collect information on the feasibility and practical implementation of new mobility policies. While the original intent was to develop unique policy recommendations for each city, we found in our research that new mobility policies that are currently considered best practice are applicable to all cities of different sizes and contexts. Thus, most of our policy recommendations apply to both Gresham and Eugene with some added specifications for each city.