ABJ30 Members and Friends,

Below is a copy of the draft minutes from our summer meeting in Dallas, TX.  We need help compiling the list of folks “on the phone” – please let us know if you were “there” – or have names in your notes – You can send comments/edits/corrections to Maren Outwater (Maren.Outwater@rsginc.com) – Thanks!

Regards,

Kate

 

 

DRAFT

ABJ30   Urban Transportation Data and

Information Systems Committee

http://www.trburbandata.org/

Annual Meeting Minutes

June 4, 2012

3:30 PM – 5:30 PM

The Fairmont Dallas

Minutes compiled by Colin Smith and Maren Outwater

 

 

I.                   Welcome and Introductions

20 members and friends attended; 5 of these were members

 

II.                Approval of the Minutes – Maren Outwater [moutwater@rsginc.com]

Minutes from the 2012 Annual Meeting were approved

 

III.               Reports

a.       Chair’s Report - Kate Lawson [lawsonc@albany.edu]

The committee activities included a new website, http://www.trburbandata.org/, which everyone should check out.  There is a new sub-committee “Computational Transportation and Society”, which is authorized and ready to accept members.  One research need statement has gone into NCHRP 08-36, but we are seeking more RNSs.

Progress is being made on 08-36 Task 108; there was a phone meeting in June.  Kate reported that our long-time member Nathan Erlbaum has passed away. We would like to request a new paper award to honor his memory. Please let Kate know if you can help with organizing that.

The workshop deadline was extended to July 31st; there is one already on Computational Transportation and Society.  We should consider the addition of General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) to our charge for urban data.  Nancy McGuckin from ABJ45(T) committee reported on the National Household Travel Survey scope, which is a 3-year outreach to scope the next NHTS. They are interested in user needs, ideas on methods, and data items needed. There is a Wednesday workshop at NATMEC on NHTS. There is a powerpoint on the NHTS website and a Listserv set up for NHTS outreach.

 

 

b.      Section Chair Report – Reg Souleyrette [rsouley@engr.uky.edu]

Reg Souleyrette reported on a TRB committee on social and cultural factors who would like to cosponsor a workshop. This will be on secondary data collection on the human environmental and how they are used, their limitations, and field validation of the data. They will be contacting Kate to get this rolling. 

 

 

c.       ABJ30(1) Subcommittee on Census Data/Workshop – Clara Reschovsky [[creschovsky@mwcog.org], MWCOG/Kristin Rohanna [kroh@sandag.org], SANDAG  

The workshop at the annual meeting in Jan was well attended. We are still considering whether to do a workshop next Jan. Unfortunately CTPP from the 5-year ACS will not be available but some national tabulations might be ready by then. We should consider a workshop on NCHRP synthesis on PUMS data by Kevin Tierney.

 

d.      AFD30(1) Archived Data User Service Subcommittee - Kristin Tufte [tufte@cs.pdx.edu], PSU

There was no update from this subcommittee. 

 

e.      Health Sub-Committee – Ed Christopher [edc@berwyned.com]/Eloisa Raynault [eloisa.raynault@apha.org]

This is a subcommittee of 4 committees that has existed for one year. We have a busy listserv – TrbHealth.org. The subcommittee meets monthly and is very active. Jeff Frkonja reached out to consider a workshop on a joint bike/ped-health/transportation survey.  A cross cutting session at the group level on health and transportation is a possibility.  Nancy McGuckin presented at California Walk, and explained that we can’t do trends analysis with the NHTS. She prepared a brief that was circulated.

 

f.        Bike and Ped Sub-Committee – Elizabeth Stolz [liz@chapsys.com]

This subcommittee was very busy, holding monthly meetings.  We have 3 workshop ideas for the annual meeting:

·         The one with health (see above)

·         Data sharing (possibly joint with Hugh Monting (?)

·         Factoring bike/ped data to annual data

There will be a call for papers on bike/ped data.  Wednesday is bike and pedestrian day at NATMEC.

 

g.      Computational Transportation Science – Piyushimita (Vonu) Thakuriah [vonu-pt@uic.edu]

Workshop ideas for this subcommittee are on big data, which we could cosponsor with data visualization and another committee.

 

IV.           Activities Planned for Annual Meeting

a.    Workshops (4:45 – 4:55)

There are two possible workshops:

·         Invited session on what data needs are, what the state of the practice is.

·         Corridor planning (long distance corridors)

 

b.    Paper Review Plans (4:55 – 5:00)

We are looking for new reviewers.  Please contact Kate Lawson if you are interested. 

 

c.    Research Needs Statement Update - Jan-Mou (James) Li [lij3@ornl.gov]/Kendra Levine [klevine@library.berkeley.edu] (5:00 – 5:10)

We are working on one research needs statement on how proposed research on data integration should happen. We are looking for input – fairly general. The funding looked for was $99,000. It could be done under 08-36. We are meeting to decide this at the end of the week.

 

d.    TSP Matrix – Next Steps (5:10 – 5:20)

See website for the TSP.  This includes ways to think about performance measures that goes beyond transportation measures. Is there any feedback on this?  Nancy McGuckin suggested that we pull this out of the TSP and get feedback via website on each specific measures. She volunteered to put in powerpoint and thinks Vonu should present in Jan at TRB. 

 

V.            New Business

a.    Summer Meeting 2013 (5:20 – 5:25)

We will plan on a podium session and a poster session, possibly one joint session with the traffic monitoring committee.  We can consider invited speaker sessions? We need to name invited speakers by October.  One possibility that Ed Christopher recommended is  “long distance travel”. Possible sponsors include statewide, perhaps a new national data committee. The forum with 5 speakers (5-7 minutes) or limited to 3 speakers (20 minutes).

b.    Emerging Topics (5:25 – 5:30)

·         Connected Vehicles and Devices.  UTC at Virginia Tech going to be rolling this out on I-66.

·         Large quantity of hot GPS data. We have set up a secure data repository. Can we start pushing data in there? Research data exchange – talk to the people doing that at annual meeting at committee meeting. See if they are interested in doing that. Data handling, data access issues, are huge, e.g. standard non-disclosure agreements are needed. What happens when this is more than a pilot, where will all of the data be housed?

·         Transit data for urban planning.  Do we do transit data? e.g. google data to build transit supply side of models (GTFS data).  Elaine Murakami did a research statement on this a while ago but it was not selected. FTA is now getting interested in it.  Does anyone own this in TRB? There was a workshop at last TRB on working with GTFS data, apps using it, etc.

·         ACS is possibly not getting funded. The “assault on data”. We need bullet points like what are the 10 things we need data for. The Wall St Journal editorial is very good. Northwestern is trying to get a short OpEd out but having trouble. Emphasizing private sector users is important. e.g. Target produced a film on this. The NHTS is also in danger long term.

c.    Next summer meeting

Possibly at TRB Planning Apps in Columbus, OH

VI.           Adjourn (5:30)

 

 

From: Maren Outwater [mailto:Maren.Outwater@rsginc.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 5:37 PM
To: Lawson, Catherine T
Subject: RE: reviewer for TRB Papers?

 

Kate- Will you address the 2 comments in the minutes before you send them out on whether TRB and RITA reports were given?  Thanks.

 

From: Lawson, Catherine T [mailto:lawsonc@albany.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 4:34 PM
To: Maren Outwater
Subject: RE: reviewer for TRB Papers?

 

GREAT!!!  Thanks – I will send these out to the listserv for comments/edits.  I am glad you will be available to review papers – if the reviews come in with good rating – we might even want to do a podium session -

 

From: Maren Outwater [mailto:Maren.Outwater@rsginc.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 5:30 PM
To: Lawson, Catherine T
Subject: RE: reviewer for TRB Papers?

 

Kate-

Yes, I can review the GPS papers.  I have also attached the minutes, I am sorry this took so long. It includes the attendees at the end.  I didn’t have anything on the TRB or RITA reports, so not sure if these were covered at the meeting or not.  Let me know if you have questions or comments and then I can put these up on the web site. 

Thanks.

Maren

 

From: Lawson, Catherine T [mailto:lawsonc@albany.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2012 3:45 PM
To: Maren Outwater
Subject: reviewer for TRB Papers?

 

Maren,

Just touching base with you – I am going to be looking for folks to review papers – we have a big pile of GPS papers this year – would you be willing to review some – or provide me with suggestions for folks you know are currently working with these data on both auto and transit uses?  I also need to know if you got the minutes notes from the summer meeting and my listing of the attendees – I can’t tell from the website if we are getting edits/comments back yet --- hope you are having a good summer – with TRB papers piling up – I know summer is almost over!!!

Regards,

Kate

 

 

Catherine T. Lawson, Ph.D.

Director, MRP Program

Geography and Planning Department

Associate Professor

University at Albany

Geography & Planning

AS 218 1400 Washington

Albany, New York 12222

(518) 442-4775

(518) 442-4742 FAX

(518) 209-1155 CELL