The meeting was called to order by Chairperson, Ed Christopher, at approximately 1:30 PM. Current committee members, new members, friends of the committee and others introduced themselves. Sign-in sheets [EXCEL format] were distributed. Agenda [WORD format]
TRB 2005 Sessions. Three sessions were officially sponsored by the Committee: 502 – American Community Survey: Challenges and More Challenges; 555 – Estimating and Predicting Freeway Travel Time and Its Reliability; and 579 – Advances in Travel Data Processing and Analysis. In addition, the Committee had a strong hand in the development of the Travel Data Users Forum, Session 271. Committee members played a large role in this session. The Committee sponsored two workshops: Transportation Infrastructure and Obesity: Emerging National Issue – Science to Solutions, held on Sunday, 8:30 AM – noon; and Users of the 2001 National Household Travel Survey Data: Nuts and Bolts of the 2001 NHTS, held Sunday, 1:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
Reauthorization. Due to current circumstances, the special event, Data for Reauthorization Conference, has been temporarily suspended. Tom Palmerlee has rescheduled the topic for next November.
2004 Midyear Meeting was held as part of the NATMEC meeting in San Diego, June 2004. The Committee meeting had 10 members and 13 non-members attend. Topics included were the annual meeting and many of the activities to be covered at the annual meeting. A new Subcommittee on Research was organized by Catherine Lawson and Stacey Bricka. Progress will be reported later.
National American Travel Monitoring and Exposition Conference (NATMEC) was held June 27th through June 30th. The Committee was involved in planning this conference. Session organized by committee members include: Shawn Turner - Archived ITS data quality; Rich Margiotta – ADUS Standards and Metadata; Mark Schlappi – Measuring Urban Traffic Congestion; Ed Christopher – HPMS and Building Partnerships Around VMT. Ed Christopher and Catherine Lawson are involved in the planning and organization of NATMEC 2006 as Committee members – to be held in Minneapolis, MN.
Transferability of Household Travel Surveys Peer Exchange was held December 16, 2004 at the Keck Center in Washington, D. C. At this meeting, the FHWA TMIP Office and other TRB committees (including ABJ30) had a peer exchange on the values, pitfalls, and research needs related to sharing travel survey data across regions. Additional information is available at htpp://www.edthefed.com/xferability/. A draft Problem Statement to update NCHRP 365 is being developed for submission next September, with Committee support. In addition, Ed Christopher is working with Kouros Mohammadian of the Univeristy of Illinois at Chicago on a FHWA funded project dealing with Transferability.
Two 2005 Midyear Meetings will be held. One in Irvine, CA with the Census conference (May 11th – 13th) and the other at the TRB Joint Summer Meeting in Boston, MA, July 10th through July 12th, 2005.
Tom Palmeree’s Report to Committees. [WORD format] There was a brief discussion and general overview of papers submitted. All committees are dealing with rotations, with most doing a good job of continuing to add new members. The Tri-Annual self-evaluation will take place in 2008, however, Committee members should be thinking about strategies now – clearly this committee is one of the most active in TRB.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) Report. Tom Bolle announced that BTS has been merged with other research units under a new administration – Research and Innovation Technology Administration (RITA). A special session will be held between 3:45 – 5:30. Marriot, Salon 1, RITA and the Report to Congress on Research Activities of the U. S. Department of Transportation. The Norman Y. Mineta Research and Special Programs Improvement Act of 2004 has established a new organization, RITA, in the Department of Transportation. BTS will be merged with RSPA, Intermodal, Volpe Transportation Systems Center and others. There have been daily meetings to review support activities, finances, human resources, labor issues, etc. There will be more meetings on RITA – its reorganization and functions. BTS head will be civil servant job, not appointed as has been the case. Given the time frame of the legislation – RITA will take effect 90 days from signing - by February 27th. There will be a report to Congress 120 days from its passage (30 + 90 days). Program teams are working on transformation.
Over this last year, BTS has completed new products, including scheduling on-line data releases to make data more timely, not waiting for publications as in the past. Products cover areas including Freight (the Commodity Flow Survey) and Travel, (NHTS, preliminary data available in November 2004 and final data on CD in January, 2005).
Call for papers for Commodity Flow Users Conference, July 8th and 9th at the Boston Midyear TRB Summer meetings. The Planning team is being headed by Arnim Myberg. Focus will be on what users want, new ideas and planning for the 2007 CFS.
A Transportation Services Index (TSI) is now available. The TSI is a measure of the month-to-month changes in the output of services provided by the for-hire transportation industries. The index can be examined together with other economic indicators to produce a better understanding of the current and future course of the economy. The movement of the index over time can be compared with other economic measures to understand the relationship of changes in transportation output to changes in Gross Domestic product (GDP).
Issue: BTS has had a strong presence in transportation planning. What will happen to it URLs, messaging, email addresses, web site issues, communication team issues, etc.
Subcommittee On Metadata (ABJ30(2)). Marcus Wigan proclaimed the work of the subcommittee has been completed. It is now time for the next step. One suggestion was for a Saratoga Freight Data-like meeting be planned with federal support to take the topic to the next level. However, the subcommittee is not the appropriate format for this approach. This is also a larger issue than any one TRB committee can take on by themselves. Another suggestion, which Ed Christopher noted he would bring to the Data Section Chairs, was for TRB to establish a formal task force across the 11 data committees. Marcus also noted that the NCHRP project dealing with XML is not meeting the total need. He believes the right next step is to ask the federal government to take a leadership position.
ADUS Activities. Ralph Gillman reported on the virtual subcommittee. At the first meeting subcommittee 12 people discussed writing a research circular promote ADUS – The issues are being reviewed by Rich Margiotta and Shawn Turner. At the mid year meeting, committee chair – Mark Gardner called for papers for ADUS. The focus of the papers is beyond the interest and expertise of committee members – development of archives, use of archives for planning. There were 37 papers to be reviewed. Gillman made a presentation [Powerpoints]. VII vehicle to roadside infrastructure – data resource to be explored.
Rich Margiotta reported that the standards committee has been operating for 5 years. He discussed the ITS data template for meta standards. He invited anyone to become a member of ASTM. Those who pay the $75 dues become voting members.There are funds available for travel and for hiring consultants.
Shawn Turner reported on his work on lessons learned regarding performance monitoring on the FHWA website. He has collected information from 30 cities and their performance measures.
Census Subcommittee. Bob Sicko reported that the subcommittee had not yet met. Nandu reported that the American Community Survey is now being fully implemented. ACS is providing products. [Powerpoints]. Call for posters for Census Conference. CTPP is also almost completed. Part 3, the final Part is expected out any day. Visit the census booth at the Marriot. Check out the BTS Product Distribution Center at https://www.bts.gov/pdc/. Data is available in ASCII format or in SAS. A DVD containing all the Part 2 along with the proprietary extraction software can be obtained from Ed Christopher. It was reported that all the data is now available in ASCII format. Geographies are also available, with TAZ shapefiles on a CD ROM.
Research Subcommittee. Catherine T. Lawson reported that the subcommittee is working on gathering ideas – using a new tool. Stacy Bricka presented the new tool as a proto type for people to submit ideas to the committee. Committee members are encouraged to go to the site and enter in research project ideas.
To get to the online form go to
Charles Gorguntula - 3000 Households surveyed in Kansas City. As Part of effort 200 GPS units were deployed and trip correction factors developed.
Kuo-Ann Chiao – NYMTC new website – collect data traffic counts, local data, state DOT
Susan Liss – There are plans to split the next national household travel surveys, with FHWA taking the lead on the daily trip survey and BTS taking the lead on the long trip survey. We plan to conduct the next surveys in the 2007/2008 timeframe. Add-ons are welcome. There will be a special meeting, NHTS- A Case Study of a Household Travel Survey – 2:00 to 4:00 in State Room, Thursday.
Catherine T. Lawson – Initiative for Healthy Infrastructure (iHi) – 3rd year of funding from NYSDOH – creating GIS trails, walking, recreational data for county level plans – on the web. Her article in the ITE Journal article focused on passive freight data – several of her students conducted a proof of concept experiment with WIM in New York. She has been working with a new type of transportation data – traffic stop data. She worked with the Louisberger Group and Steve Fitzroy and completed the Dutchess County racial-profiling study – these data have lots of information on travel behavior and accident problems. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) is interested in NHTS and encouraging cities to contribute to add-ones.
Gene Bandy – Baltimore has continued to work with its NHTS addons and is also using GPS to collect travel time data.
Mark Schlappi – the Phoenix travel time study is wrapping up and the results are being incorporated and analyzed. AS the economy is going down we seem to seeing an influence on travel and trip rates, a 10% decline. What is the variance and standard deviation by segment or trip purposes? What is the variation by market segment and what should you expect? We are also wondering about how to disguise the confidentiality of individuals and still put our travel survey out, maybe online. Looking for advice and what others have done. We are working with ADOT planning freeway managemnt, planning our own ATRs, -Traffic counting program – ITS versus traffic counting program don’t need same level of information. Problems with ITS getting good counts and cost differential.
Stacy Bricka –Portland Pilot (300 hhlds of which 200 will be equipped with on-person GPS units for everyone age 16+), the EPA work in Kansas City (where we're recruiting hhld travel survey participants to bring in their vehicles for real-time emissions testing -- so that gives us travel data and emissions data for their vehicles too).
Emily Parkany -finished up work on ACS Seasonality report.
David Pearson -Planning for major round of household travel surveys with Texas MPOs.
Keith Hoghed - O/D again freeway HOV studies – GA transit data collection.
Ed Lemoges –Wrapping up documentation of extended allocation procedure used by the Census Bureau for the CTPP.
Ralph Gillman - Office – upgrade traffic counters to permanent counters
Todd Ashby – Kansas City – Household Travel survey is being put to use and the region is embarking on using the “Paint the town” software to help with its employment forecasts. Also initiated an On-Board transit survey and have released an RFP for some model development work.
Siim Soot - working with ACS data specifically for LakeCounty which is just north of Chicago. Looking at annual trend data – 1999 to 2003 by track, showing employment decline, house values up, income down, auto ownership. Stay tuned.
Sue Kimbrough – EPA – new mobile model- greenhouse has EPA website
Ed Christopher - TRB critical issues – for this committee two areas have emerged, Meta Data, and Privacy and Confidentially.Privacy and Confidentiality will be advanced from the committee while metadata will be brought to the Data Section Chairs [Powerpoints].
Working on a NCHRP proposal calling for the update of 365. It will go beyond the current report (draft attached).
End of meeting – 5:23 PM