Jennifer Dill, Ph.D.

I’m spending this week with 24 Oregon high school students, leading a transportation camp. It’s what all older transportation geeks (like me) wish they could have done in high school. Today @trimet.org gave us a tour of the Robertson Tunnel! @trecpdx.bsky.social

YouTube video by ABC News 2 friends travel 1,400 miles on public transit from Mexico to Canada border

Is @anomalily.net aware of this?

youtu.be/YpMTPbqz5ts?...

3-panel comic. Young girl to young man: My mom got her new e-bike but not just any e-bike. It’s one of those bike utility bikes my brother and I can ride on the back of. If running errands with her stays this much fun, I’m going to suspect a plot. Young man: And not mind.

Cargo e-bikes in the comics!

Interesting analysis by @cityobservatory.bsky.social

US DOT Secretary Duffy has appointed 12 members to the USDOT Advisory Board, which will provide the secretary "with strategic recommendations and high-level guidance."

All of the 12 members are white men.

www.transportation.gov/briefing-roo...

"...and especially long-haul trucking in the latter category. From an externalities perspective, considerations of local pollution, road wear, congestion, and accidents all come into play. Innovation and network failures that impede the
penetration of electric vehicles are also a consideration."

"...A benefits perspective argues for a VMT tax on the grounds that those using roads should bear the cost of their upkeep (as financed through the Highway Trust Fund). But this begs the question of the appropriate sharing of costs between personal and commercial transportation,..."

From Tank to Odometer: Winners and Losers from a Gas-to-VMT Tax Shift Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Conclusions:
"[W]e have not made a case on theoretical grounds for efficiency improvements from such a...swap. Whether we should think of the gas (or VMT) tax as a benefit tax or as an externality-correcting tax, there are a number of factors to take into consideration...
www.nber.org/papers/w33894

Figure 10: Change in tax collections from gas-VMT tax swap by political party affiliation. Figure 10 shows density functions for changes in tax payments by the political affiliation of the census tract’s member of the U.S. House of Representatives. There is a clear difference in the distribution of changes in tax payments, with the distribution for Democratic tracts shifted significantly to the right.

Using the political affiliation of the census tract’s member of the U.S. House, they show that households in Democratic tracts would pay more.
www.nber.org/papers/w33894

Four bar charts shoring the Change in tax payments by income decile and urbanity. The x-axis is 10 income deciles. y-axis is change in dollars per household spent. Four areas Overall: Bars are below 0 for 1st-6th deciles, above for 8th to 10th Metropolitan areas: Bars are below 0 for 1st-5th deciles, above for 6th to 10th Rural areas: Bars are below 0 for 1st-9th deciles, above for 10th Suburban: Bars are below 0 for 1st-9th deciles, above for 10th

These charts show the change in payments by income and area type.
The simplified analysis is based on overall fuel economy by zip code, not by HH characteristics. VMT predicted from demographics by census tract.
www.nber.org/papers/w33894

From Tank to Odometer: Winners and Losers from a Gas-to-VMT Tax Shift Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

This "thought experiment" about who pays more/less by replacing fed gas tax with VMT fee shows that rural and suburban folks would pay less; higher income & education more.
From Tank to Odometer: Winners and Losers from a Gas-To-VMT Tax Shift
www.nber.org/papers/w33894

Daurian Starlings at the Chanba National Wetland Park in Xi'an, China #Birds

Research shows that e-bike lending programs can effectively shift travel behaviors. A new PSU report offers a comprehensive scan of 54 #ebike lending libraries in the United States: trec.pdx.edu/news/expandi... (Those are @ridevvolt.bsky.social bikes from a Portland lending library in the pic!)

It's International #WomenInEngineering Day, so let's celebrate some transportation researchers from @maseehcollege.bsky.social!

First, meet Sirisha Kothuri:
trec.pdx.edu/research/res...

Her research focuses on multimodal traffic operations, bicycle and pedestrian counting, and safety.

My Padres are simply “a nod to their binational fanbase and colors that highlight the vibrancy of the region's coastal community.” So, I think we rank low, though I respect the connection to Mexico

That is really good! I hadn’t seen that.

2025 MLB City Connect jerseys New City Connect jerseys in 2025  | More to come throughout 2025

MLB City Connect uniforms, a Friday night tradition of 3? years. I’m sure there’s a clever urban theory connection/joke/pun to be made

www.mlb.com/stories/2025...

An adult female Northern Flicker on a utility pole. Two chicks with their heads poking out of a hole in the pole.

Feeding time at the Northern Flicker nest. #Birds

A Northern Flicker on the side of the top of a wooden utility pole, with it’s beak open and tongue out

Northern Flicker, showing some tongue
#Birds

So Portland. The 50501 protest training and the Pedalpalooza Bike Summer Taylor Swift Eras tour ride are meeting at the same spot. Which one am I here for?

Turns out there are three chicks in this Northern Flicker nest. #Birds

Feeding time at the Northern Flicker nest in the utility pole outside our home. #Birds

when your work stress is about climate-supportive transportation and you live in Portland, I think it’s expected

I’ve been twice and loved it. It was either the WSJ or NYT that once said Pittsburgh is the new Portland.

The implications?
Community transport acts as a sticking plaster solution to the problem of rural transport poverty. But what role should the community sector play?

👉 Read more here: kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

US science is being wrecked, and its leadership is fighting the last war Facing an extreme budget, the National Academies hosted an event that ignored it.

This is grim… What is the National Academy of Sciences even doing?

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

There is now a Women and Families committee

The link between low-stress bicycle facilities and bicycle commuting - Nature Cities Bicycling offers a range of benefits for urban commuters, but the facilities that best facilitate bicycle lane use are still unclear. Using data from 28 US cities, this study found that bicycle lanes ...

Great new longitudinal research from Drs. Nick Ferenchak and Wes Marshall, showing the value of protected bike lanes (over single stripes, sharrows, or nothing) in increasing rates of cycle commuting.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Vladimir Dinets - Wikipedia

I just love that this researcher turned what started (I assume) as random, everyday neighborhood observations into publishable research.
More about the researcher:

dinets.info

Another detail: two years later “In the summer of 2023, the sound signals at the streetlight stopped working for unknown reason, and the residents of house #2 stopped leaving leftovers. No hawks were ever observed at the intersection after that.”