So last week these two little get-togethers happened – Transportation Camp and the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting.  This post is the stuff I have to talk about related to both.

Transportation Camp

• Lots of discussion about transit.  Seems nearly all sessions had the word ‘transit’ used once.
• There was a lot of technical discussion that were incremental improvements over current methods:
  • Object Tracking with Raspberry Pi (my big takeaway from this is to go get the latest RPi image for the Java support)
  • Transit On-Board Surveys
    • Using Nexus tablets isn’t all that different from the PDAs NuStats used on our Transit On-Board Survey in 2010
    • Their code was noted as open source… definitely worth a look
    • Their interface is an improvement over the PDAs because of the ability to show maps
      • There is a possibility that this could be used to reduce geocoding overhead – the tablet could do it on the fly and show it to the respondent for confirmation… there is a privacy issue here
    • Their tools for tracking surveys were awesome
    • This was done in the Philippines
  • Tracking Taxis
    • This was also done in the Philippines
    • They built some cool tracking tools
    • They used the data as floating car travel time surveys
  • Bicycle Integration
    • Bicycle planners love multi-day surveys – additional days means that they have more trips to analyze
      • One planner was using the NHTS for data – one day, not a lot of trips
    • CycleTracks!
    • RackSpotter – crowd-sourced bicycle rack data

TRB Annual Meeting

• Applications
  • There was some clear interest in Session 291.  I couldn’t get into the room.  Some of these were presented at the Applications Conference, though, and I hope any that were not are presented at the next one
• Data
  • Social Media took center stage for part of the sessions.  There were two I scheduled for, although one I didn’t make it to.  There is a lot of research looking in to how we can use social media in modeling, but it is not yet ripe for use.
  • There are important balancing acts among the context of data vs. the presentation of data  and the cost to collect the data vs. the cost to analyze data
  • More data makes decision making more difficult
  • As a profession, we need to concentrate on what decision is going to be made from data
    • We have a tendency to overwhelm decision makers
    • We frequently tell a decision maker how a watch is made when all they want to know is the time
  • Open data is important, but also open analysis is important
  • We always need to differentiate modeled data vs. observed data
  • Lots of lesser-quality data still has uses
    • Predictive modeling, like typing and driving
    • Sometimes lesser-quality data can be embellished with good data
  • GPS data modeling is still an emerging topic
    • Two presentations that I saw about getting the purpose of a trip
    • One presentation that I saw about getting the mode of a trip
• Testing Models and the Next 50 Years of Modeling
  • Lots of discussion related to testing models
  • FHWA and OKI and PSRC are working on a project relating to testing models
  • I actually had a lot more written here, but unfortunately issues in my area that directly relate to my work means that it really isn’t within my best interest to post it here.  It’s unfortunate, because it is some good stuff (and it will be used moving forward in my work at OKI).

Goodbye TRB #93.  This book of TRBs has closed and a new edition begins next year at the convention center.

Goodbye (for me) to the 1/2″ thick conference program.  I took one this year, but truthfully I never used it.  The app is *that good*.  I don’t plan on taking a book next year or beyond.

Goodbye to the Hilton staff, because even though many of us don’t care for the hotel itself, the staff has done lots to help us feel at home.  We’ll miss y’all, but we won’t miss the uncomfortable chairs, limited free WiFi, or many other physical aspects of the hotel.

Goodbye to the %&$# hill on Connecticut Avenue.  Many of us government employees are rejoicing that next year we will not be schlepping a rolling suitcase up that hill.

Goodbye to the Bier Baron.  Well maybe.  I’d be fine with going back as the service was better this year and, well, bacon lollipops!  Hopefully @e-lo doesn’t call my beer selection “toxic” if we make it back next year.

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I have been thinking about three things lately, and these will be topics over the next few weeks:

Recap of TRBAM and Transportation Camp.

How to blog.  I’ve been approached by a few people asking about starting a blog.  I’m going to have a post describing my process, tools, etc.

Narrowing the Research-Practice gap.  I have some ideas, and some things I’m going to put into practice here with the University of Cincinnati (whom we already have a great relationship with).

Model Testing.  It is becoming increasingly important to ensure we are testing our models, and not just calibrating and validating.  I have some new ideas that may expand what we test, even further than what TMIP will be coming out with later this year (that I am involved with)

Licensing of Government Code.  I have the feeling that we need to revisit how we license code written by MPOs and DOTs as well as code purchased by the same (and to a degree, where do we draw the line between code as an executable and code as code?)

Open Presenting.  I want to look into having presentations hosted on-line and accessible to anyone.  This is because there was a projector problem in Transportation Camp that wouldn’t have been an issue except that the presentation was a ppt/pptx and it wasn’t online.  Nearly everyone in the audience had a tablet or laptop, and I’m sure everyone had a smartphone.

Cell Phone Data.  OKI purchased cell phone data from Airsage, and I will be posting about our processing of it, and I will also post about the Cell Phone Data Symposium at TRB in February.

Decision Trees.  Among the things I learned a little bit about, this is one that I want to look more into.

I think that’s it.  I had fun this year, and it was great to talk with old friends and make new friends, too.