Two sessions:
- Expanding Imagination with Non-Technical 3D Visualization
- Crashes Don’t Just Happen: Can We Model Them?
Expanding Imagination with Non-Technical 3D VisualizationIn the immediate aftermath of a UO student killed on bicycle earlier in 2026, outrage about poor street design from new groups of people emerged. Within a week, a police-escorted funeral procession that closed major streets in Eugene ensued that was simultaneously a remembrance for the student and a public call for action. A week later, a public forum by a local advocacy group was hastily arranged to provide an outlet for the anger and to communicate to city leadership and staff that they need to do better in their street designs and need to do it more quickly; the event overflowed a middle school cafeteria with over 200 people in attendance, many who had never before engaged in street / transportation topics. One key part of both the gatherings and the potential directions was the use of a web-based, non-technical 3D street visualization software, called 3D Street, to redesign the street where the student was killed and to give this broader public a wider set of possibilities on how streets can be designed beyond calling for crosswalks, stop signs, and HAWK signals.
This session will focus on that visualization aspect of the case study, partially embedding it into the story itself and partially demonstrating the ease for non-technicians to make really effective redesign visualizations. As many of us know in the active transportation space, we have a lot of knowledge of how to build better streets, but we have a gap in putting knowledge into practice. Giving more people the tools to make effective visions of alternative futures and then using those visualizations to gather more support and pressure to accelerate better design practice is the focus of this session.
Crashes Don’t Just Happen: Can We Model Them?Metro and ODOT have been working to develop and implement safety analysis techniques that incorporate systemic safety thinking to tell a fuller story about why and where traffic injuries occur in Oregon and in the Portland Metro Region. Many safety analyses focus on user behavior but ignore systemic impacts from infrastructure and roadway operational characteristics like traffic lanes and traffic volumes. This presentation will share recent work by ODOT to account for role that infrastructure and pedestrian volume play in explaining variation in pedestrian injuries. Metro is one of the first regions in the U.S. to attempt to implement spatial crash prediction models.
This talk will discuss the process of developing both agencies’ tools and where the tools currently stand. While developing these models, both agencies have learned about the data and tools available. They have raised interesting questions about how to use them to tell more complete stories about traffic safety in Oregon and Portland Metro region. This talk will emphasize opportunities for collaboration between Metro, ODOT and other partners to better predict the impact of investments on safety and pedestrian travel. It will discuss the initial results of the models and what they mean for the complicated relationships between vehicle-miles-traveled, investments for intervention, multi-modal travel, and safety outcomes. The talk will build into a bigger discussion on the role of data models to tell stories and inspire investment in safety and active transportation. It will engage the audience to share experiences about how to tell stories with complex models and limited data. This talk will revolve around open discussions, and we will encourage the audience to share their suggestions, experiences, and ideas for future collaboration.
