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The Travel Model Improvement Program Newsletter

Issue 15, January 2003 (PDF format PDF files require the use of a PDF reader. You may download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these files. If you already have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer it should automatically open to view the files when you click on the link to the document. )

The Travel Model Improvement Program is sponsored by:
U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
Federal Transit Administration

Table of Contents
The Goals of TMIP’s 5-Year Plan – What we can achieve
TMIP Welcomes New Review Panel Members
TMIP Contract Renewed
New NHI Course Offering
TMIP Hosts First Peer Exchange
TMIP Listserv promotes information sharing
Upcoming Events

The Goals of TMIP’s 5-Year Plan

What we can achieve

In an effort to better achieve mobility, safety, security, and environmental objectives, TMIP has created a 5-Year Plan. Leadership, innovation, and the support of travel analysis improvements are central themes of the plan.

According to Michael Culp, manager of the TMIP Outreach, Training, and Technical Assistance Programs, the 5-Year Plan was developed to update and expand the program’s mission, goals, and objectives, which were originally conceived a decade ago.

"As transportation planning has evolved, the demands on travel analysis have changed as well," Culp says. "The plan refocuses the program to help planners do better analysis by pursuing new goals that are more holistic, with emphasis on improving the state of the practice, not just conducting research."

The goals of the 5-Year Plan are:

  1. to help planning agencies build their institutional capacity to perform travel-related technical analysis;
  2. to develop analytical methods that respond to the needs of planning and environmental decision making processes; and
  3. to support mechanisms to ensure the quality of technical analysis used to meet local, state, and federal program requirements.

To accomplish the first goal, TMIP will continue to pursue many of the activities already in place, such as the clearinghouse and website, but new and expanded services are scheduled for delivery in the future. New services and activities include establishing more collaborative partnerships with other organizations and expanding training and technical assistance capabilities through video, DVDs, CD-ROMs, and other interactive media.

TMIP expects to accomplish the second of the three goals by continuing to conduct research and technology development in the travel forecasting area.

"TMIP has conducted numerous research projects, ranging from improvements to the current travel models, to the creation of the TRANSIMS technology," Culp says. "Some of the first activities under this goal will be to develop a plan for our research program and more effectively coordinate with other research entities and stakeholder groups."

Recognizing accomplishments by individuals and groups will be an important component of TMIP’s third goal. By providing an incentives program and showcasing exemplary travel forecasting methods, processes, and professionals in the U.S., the program will provide encouragement to innovators. Working toward this goal, and fostering an environment of excellence, TMIP will strengthen relationships and collaborations between interested parties at the federal, state, and local levels.

According to Culp, the program will provide training for federal, state, and local staff to help them make more informed decisions regarding travel forecasting. It will also support peer reviews of agency modeling techniques by providing funding assistance.

As TMIP implements the 5-Year Plan and continues to help agencies improve travel analysis techniques, program members will seek out more customized, flexible ways to help solve the evolving challenges of transportation planners. Working toward the plan’s goals will help TMIP accomplish its mission in support of professionals hard at work in travel analysis and transportation planning.

Table of Contents

TMIP Welcomes New Review Panel Members

Chaushie Chu

Director of Systems Analysis and Research
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)

As the Director of Systems Analysis and Research at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Chaushie is responsible for travel demand modeling, GIS, and freight logistic analysis at MTA.

His expertise includes innovative travel demand modeling, revenues forecasting, investment grade appraisals for project financing, fiscal planning and programming, environmental assessment and clearance, conceptual engineering, traffic signal synchronization, and highway safety, as well as optimal police force deployment and patrol vehicle dispatch at traffic police departments.

Chaushie is a recognized United Nations Development Program (UNDP) expert in transportation engineering and has extensive experience with transportation projects in the United States, People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Manila, and Saudi Arabia.

Trip Pollard

Senior Attorney
Southern Environmental Law Center

As a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), a non-profit environmental organization that works in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, Trip directs the SELC’s Land and Community Project. The organization uses legal and policy advocacy to promote transportation and land use decisions that protect the environment and enhance the quality of life of this region.

Trip has written or co-authored numerous articles and reports. His recent publications include "Smart Growth and Sustainable Transportation: Can We Get There from Here?" and "Smart Growth: The Promise, Politics, and Potential Pitfalls of Emerging Growth Management Strategies." Trip has also lectured widely, taught courses on transportation and historic preservation issues, and served on the board of numerous organizations. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Virginia.

Table of Contents

TMIP Contract Renewed

For the second time since the TMIP program’s inception, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) awarded the program’s support contract to the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). The contract will focus on five primary tasks, including program and product marketing, the TMIP clearinghouse and website, reviewing panel coordination, training and presentations, and technical support.

TTI’s Center for Professional Development will lead the effort with participation from several other TTI divisions and programs, including Systems Planning, the Information and Technology Exchange Center, Library and Information Services, and the Office of Conference Management Services.

TTI professional staff members Dr. Gary Thomas (principle investigator), Dr. Gordon Shunk, Lisa Day, Kelly West, Sandy Tucker, Kathy Montemayor, and Tobey Nutt will participate on the TMIP project team. Dr. Trina Smith and an instructional system design specialist, both from the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), are also team members. Additionally, TTI will seek to hire a staff person to work at the USDOT headquarters in Washington, D.C.

With help from TTI, the TMIP program will continue work in the crucial area of transferring technology to transportation modelers at various state agencies and metropolitan planning organizations. Additionally, the TMIP clearinghouse, which maintains documents related to travel modeling, will move from the USDOT headquarters to College Station within the next few months. Clearinghouse documents will continue to be available for ordering from the TMIP website, by phone, and by fax.

Gary Thomas

Associate Research Engineer and Center for Professional Development Director, Texas Transportation Institute

Gary Thomas is the director of the Center for Professional Development (CPD) at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). With interests in transportation engineering education, distance learning, career guidance, and traffic operations, Gary earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Minnesota and a master’s and doctoral degree in civil engineering from Arizona State University.

As a consultant for Lee Engineering in Phoenix, he worked primarily in traffic signal system design, traffic impact studies, GIS applications, signing and striping design, and transportation modeling. Gary was also the first traffic engineer for the community of Gilbert, Arizona (a city of nearly 100,000 in the Phoenix area).

Before accepting his position at TTI, Gary was a faculty member at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where he taught courses in traffic engineering and airport planning and design. As TTI’s CPD director, he oversees workshops, seminars, career guidance, technology transfer, and research.

Table of Contents

New NHI Course Offering

The FHWA National Highway Institute is developing a new course entitled Estimating Regional Mobile Source Emissions. Mila Plosky is the course coordinator and Mike Culp is the course technical representative. The Texas Transportation Institute is the contractor for the course, which will be taught in late February or early March 2003. Persons interested in participating in the pilot course are asked to contact Mike Culp. There is no fee for attending the pilot. The 3-day pilot will be taught in Louisville, Kentucky from Tuesday morning until noon on Friday. The course is expected to be completed and available for scheduling by state DOTs or MPOs beginning in May 2003.

Terminal Course Objective
Develop mobile source emissions estimates to support conformity determinations.

Course Requirements
Participants should have 1-3 years experience in travel demand forecasting, conformity or air quality analysis, or have completed NHI Course 152054, Introduction to Travel Demand Forecasting and/or the National Transit Institute’s course, Introduction to Transportation/Air Quality Conformity course.

Target Audience

Learning Objectives

Table of Contents

TMIP Hosts First Peer Exchange

The TMIP program hosted its first peer exchange on "The Use of Expert Panels in Developing Land Use Forecasts" in Washington, D.C., October 23-24, 2002. The exchange participants included representatives from State Departments of Transportation and Metropolitan Planning Organizations who have used expert panels in the past, along with other potential users of the technique.

Planning agencies are increasingly using expert panels to tap expert opinion and reach consensus on land use forecasts. The technique has mostly been applied to a project or corridor cumulative impacts for environmental documentation. Expert panels have also been used for developing regional land use forecasts.

Participants of the peer exchange shared their experiences in using expert panels, outlining characteristics of successful applications and also lessons learned. A summary report of the expert panel peer exchange will be available in January 2003 through the TMIP website, and later in printed form.

The TMIP program plans to host 2-3 more peer exchanges in 2003.

Table of Contents

TMIP Listserv promotes information sharing

The listerv was set up as a venue to discuss various transportation-related topics, ask questions, post transportation-related job positions, conferences and courses, and to announce new papers and articles relevant to transportation issues.

Topics discussed on the list lately include HOV assignments, Mobility Management versus Capacity Expansion, and Modeling Transit Reliability.

If you would like to join the list go to http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/ and click on "E-mail List," or go directly to http://listserv.tamu.edu/archives/tmip-l.html.

The list features a web-based archive that allows you to search posts by topic, author’s address, or range of dates. The posts are automatically archived by month. Members may also submit queries to the list for indexes, members, and other miscellaneous features.

Upcoming Events

Conferences

January 12-16, 2003
Transportation Research Board
82nd Annual Meeting
Washington, D.C.
(301) 694-5243
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/trb/annual.nsf

April 6-11, 2003
9th Application of Transportation Planning Methods Conference
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
(225) 767-9167
sromero@dotd.state.la.us
http://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/TRBConference/

May 18-21, 2003
Statewide Transportation Planning Conference
Florida Keys, Florida
kfisher@nas.edu

Courses

March 10-14, 2003
Travel Demand Analysis
College of Engineering
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida
(813) 974-2275
ihall@eng.usf.edu

May 6-8, 2003
NHI/NTI Course #152069
Metropolitan Transportation Planning
New Orleans, Louisiana
(225) 757-7605
marilyn.chambers@fhwa.dot.gov
http://www.ntionline.com/

Table of Contents

To subscribe to this free newsletter send an e-mail to TMIP@tamu.edu or contact Gary Thomas at (ph.) (979) 458-3263, (fax) (979) 845-6001, (mail) Gilchrist, Room 112, Texas Transportation Institute, Texas A&M University System, 3135 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3135