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2560 discussions

by Liang Long

I will be out of the office starting 09/15/2010 and will not return until 10/12/2010. I will respond to your message when I return. Please contact with Dalia Leven (dleven(a)camsys.com) for CTPP technical support.

15 years, 5 months

Redesigned ACS site

by Ed Christopher

This came out from the census bureau today and I thought might folks might be interested. ------------ The U.S Census Bureau is pleased to announce a redesign of the American Community Survey (ACS) website. See the latest in new information for survey respondents, easy access to ACS data, and clear explanations to commonly asked questions. Take a look at the redesigned website online at www.census.gov/acs. We welcome any questions or feedback on the new site. We look forward to providing you up-to-date information about the ACS program and future data releases. If you do not want to receive updates about the ACS, or if you want to receive updates only for particular topics, please use the “Unsubscribe” or “Manage Preferences” links below. Regards, American Community Survey staff American Community Survey – New Data Every Year www.census.gov/acs Questions about the ACS? Contact Us -- Ed Christopher Federal Highway Administration 4749 Lincoln Mall Drive, Suite 600 Matteson, IL 60443 708-283-3534 (v) 708-574-8131 (c)

15 years, 5 months

Employment Data at your Agency

by Krishnan Viswanathan

Hello All Apologies for cross-posting. Cambridge Systematics, Inc. (CS) is working on a NCHRP task to improve employment data for transportation planning. The purpose of the task is to understand and describe both the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) [or ES-202] and the Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics (LEHD) data in a manner that enhances their utility and accessibility to transportation planning agencies. More details about the project can be found here: http://144.171.11.40/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=2823 So where do you come in? I am interested in talking to MPOs and DOTs who are * very confident* about the quality of their employment data and have enhanced their employment data (assuming that the QCEW data is their main source) through either primary data collection/verification or via other secondary sources such as Dun & Bradstreet or InfoUSA (to name a few) or a combination of the two. If you are willing to share your employment data, CS will compare your employment data to the QCEW data by NAICS industry categories and will document the findings. BLS is also interested in making the QCEW data useful to more groups so if you agree, the results of our analysis will be shared with BLS so that any lessons learnt from MPOs and DOTs can be used to improve the quality of the QCEW data. Hopefully we can have a positive feedback cycle that benefits all parties and gets us better data. Please get in touch with me offline (contact details below) so as to avoid cluttering this mailing list. If there is interest i will share the findings with this list (after getting all the appropriate permissions to share). Thanks in Advance. Sincerely, Krishnan -- Krishnan Viswanathan Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 1566 Village Square Boulevard, Suite 2 Tallahassee, FL 32309 tel 850 219 6388 fax 850 219 6389 e-mail kviswanathan(a)camsys.com

15 years, 6 months

Fed Register notice on Proposed Urban Area Criteria for the 2010 Census

by Elaine.Murakami＠dot.gov

The Federal Register notice from the Census Bureau is now posted. The due date for comments is November 22. You may want to listen to Mike Ratcliffe's web presentation from June 11, 2010 that is available at: http://ctpp.transportation.org/Pages/webinardirectory.aspx ---- The Census Bureau announces publication of the "Proposed Urban Area Criteria for the 2010 Census" in the Federal Register of August 24, 2010, available on the Federal Register's website at <http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/>. The Census Bureau is seeking public comment on these proposed criteria. Comments, suggestions, or recommendations regarding the criteria should be submitted in writing, no later than November 22, 2010, to Timothy Trainor, Chief, Geography Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC 20233-7400. The Census Bureau's urban-rural classification is fundamentally a delineation of geographical areas, identifying individual urbanized areas of 50,000 or more people and urban clusters of at least 2,500 and less than 50,000 people; "rural" encompasses all population and territory not included in urban areas. The Census Bureau's urban areas represent densely developed territory, and encompass residential, commercial, and other non-residential urban land uses. Additional information about the Census Bureau's urban-rural classification is available on the Census Bureau's website at <http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/urbanruralclass.html>. The proposed urban area criteria for the 2010 Census as well as summaries of the proposed changes, are available on the Census Bureau's website at < http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/2010urbanruralclass.html>. Changes proposed for the 2010 Census include: · Use of census tracts as analysis units in the initial phase of delineation · Potential return to a maximum jump distance of 1.5 miles (the distance was increased to 2.5 miles in the Census 2000 criteria). · Use of land use/land cover data to identify territory containing non-residential urban land uses or land cover that restricts urban development, such as marshland and wetlands. · Lowering the minimum number of enplanements (departing passengers) from 10,000 to 2,500 to qualify airports for inclusion in urban areas. · Elimination of the central place concept. · Requirement that, in addition to at least 2,500 total population, an area must contain at least 1,500 persons residing outside institutional group quarters to qualify as urban. · Splitting urban agglomerations of 1,000,000 or more population based on metropolitan statistical area boundaries, or, in New England, along metropolitan New England city and town area boundaries. For further information about the Census Bureau urban-rural classification, or the proposed criteria for the 2010 Census, please contact Vincent Osier, Chief, Geographic Standards and Criteria Branch, Geography Division, U.S. Census Bureau, via e-mail at vincent.osier(a)census.gov or telephone at 301-763-9039.

15 years, 6 months

RE: [CTPP] Invitation and Call for Abstracts - 2011 TRB PlanningApplications Conference

by Bernardin, Jr., Vincent

Greetings to the CTPP world! I just want to take this opportunity on this beautiful Monday morning to remind you that there's just over three weeks left to submit your abstracts to present at the 13th TRB National Transportation Planning Applications Conference next May. See the attached call for abstracts or visit the conference website at www.trb-appcon.org for the glorious details. Don't be shy - we promise not to fall asleep reading your abstracts - believe it or not, this is our idea of a good time! So, polish up your favorite project and tell us what's different about it and why it's interesting to you. It bears repeating - the success of the conference depends on planners and engineers like you. I hope to see you and your presentation in Reno in 2011! Best, Vince Vince Bernardin, Jr., Ph.D. Chief of Transportation Modeling Bernardin, Lochmueller & Associates, Inc. 6200 Vogel Road Evansville, IN 47715 812.479.6200 -----Original Message----- From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Bernardin, Jr., Vincent Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 9:08 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: [CTPP] Invitation and Call for Abstracts - 2011 TRB PlanningApplications Conference Greetings to all CTPP-lovers out there! On behalf of TRB's Planning Applications Committee (ADB50) I would like to announce the 13th TRB National Transportation Planning Applications Conference and invite you all to seriously consider submitting an abstract for a presentation. I apologize for cross-posting if you have already received this through another source, but we want to extend a broad invitation to all transportation planners, and I thought CTPP users should be prime candidates for some good presentations. The conference will be held next spring in beautiful Reno, Nevada, "The Biggest Little City in the World," from May 8-12 of 2011. The conference website (www.trb-appcon.org) is now up and will be updated as more details become available. The focus of the whole conference is on planning applications - on planning practice rather than pure theory - so cutting-edge research is not required (although it's welcome, too). If you have a favorite or interesting project that you like to bore your spouse and children with - we're the folks who really want to hear about it! The conference is intended to be a chance for transportation planners (and modelers, engineers, etc.) from around the country and abroad to get together and learn from each other by sharing their experiences - so please consider joining us to share yours! The call for abstracts is attached. Abstracts for presentations in 16 topic areas have been specifically solicited but abstracts on any transportation planning topic are welcome. All abstracts are due by September 15, 2010. The abstracts are limited to 350 words and can be submitted online at the conference website (www.trb-appcon.org). Please feel free to contact me with any questions. The success of the conference depends on planners and engineers like you. I hope to see you and your presentation in Reno in 2011! Best, Vince Vince Bernardin, Jr., Ph.D. Chief of Transportation Modeling Bernardin, Lochmueller & Associates, Inc. 6200 Vogel Road Evansville, IN 47715 812.479.6200

15 years, 6 months

The Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Vancouver, BC were FUN!

by Elaine.Murakami＠dot.gov

HI Everyone - Ed Christopher and I were invited speakers at last week's Joint Statistical Meetings, the statisticians' equivalent to TRB. For those of you interested in survey methodology, it was fun to talk to people who deal with the same kinds of issues that we have: cell phones, paper diaries, non-response bias. We could learn a lot, especially on implementing and analyzing longitudinal surveys that are often used in health studies, so I would recommend attending JSM once in a while especially if travel survey methods is your field. (Note: Promod Chandok from BTS chairs a "transportation statistics" group that he is trying to formalize). 1. The term "worker flow" has a different meaning to labor economists than it does to us. They use this term to measure worker entrances and exits from employers. (Session 471) 2. Administrative records. There is a LOT of discussion about using administrative records to replace or augment traditional household or housing unit surveys. This topic was discussed in both of the sessions on Census 2020 (Sessions 389 and 563). a. But, this means that a lot more research would need to be completed about StARS (Statistical Administrative Records System). StARS is a compilation of federal administrative records, mostly IRS and Social Security, Medicare, Selective Service. b. John Czajka (Session 331) compared income data from Current Population Survey (CPS) to ACS and overall the numbers look OK, but when you start to break down by income classes (high vs. low) or types of income (wages vs. assets) then comparisons start to break down. One point he made was that ACS counts college students where they are living at the time of the survey, and CPS counts them at their parent's home. (I think that the StARS would also most likely count college students at their parent's home, because students are not likely to change their address for reporting to SS or IRS). c. WHERE the use of administrative records would occur in the decennial census process is a big question - would it be used as a follow-up, or would it be used at the front end, with surveys used as a follow-up? The CB said that they could not rely on the USPS to be in existence for the Census2020. 3. CB is talking about using the internet to collect responses in a large (not test) way for Census 2020. 4. Using satellite image processing in the "visionary" session (#389) on Census 2020. Joe Salvo, NYC, raised this topic . Maybe the CB has an EARP (Exploratory Advanced Research Program) like USDOT has, and could work with NASA and DoD to do some testing, maybe for the 2030 Census. 5. Several people (CB and non-CB) said that the per unit cost of a completed decennial census survey is too high and the CB needs to hold to no higher than the cost of 2010 per unit (current estimate for Census 2010 cost is $108/household). I think CB had a slide that said it was 60% higher per hhld cost than Census 2000. 6. The CB plans to issue a Fed Reg notice about the 5-year ACS tabulations in August (this month). The 5-year (2005-2009) ACS tabulations are planned to be released around December 2010. Census 2000 tracts and block groups boundaries are used (not the Census 2010 geography). These ACS tabulations will not have the benefit of the Census 2010 results to be used for sample weighting. Debbie Griffin (Session 511) said tables are NOT restricted based on population thresholds or reliability. They WILL restrict based on disclosure risk. They did not define what criteria were used to identify the disclosure risk, but Laura Z (Session 158) said that 100 cells per table was a threshold that would result in suppression, and also that GQ data will use partial synthesis to protect confidentiality. The BLOCK GROUP data from the 5-year ACS (2005-2009) will NOT be available from American Fact Finder, and may not be available in the usual "data download" area, and may be restricted to Summary File download and also Data Ferrett. Ken Hodges of Nielsen said he did not understand why the CB was applying different data access rules to BG data, when by his estimation, there were many more towns that are smaller than the average BG, and these data access limitations were not being applied to them. The Census Bureau says that BG data should ONLY be used when used to build up larger geographic areas, because the Margins of Error (MOEs) are too large otherwise. We, the transportation community, should be ready to do some small area (tract) analysis when these data are released and then make recommendations as to whether or not to use these 5-year small area tabulations. We know that sub-county estimates, e.g. place and PUMA estimates, have been problematic in some areas. 7. The CB is working on web-based tutorials to help data users understand ACS and multiple years of data accumulation and reporting. These materials are going through 508-compliance review. The CB hopes that they will have materials available in September. 8. Freddie Navarro reported several factors on why the ACS is less reliable than the Census 2000 long form, including: a. The mail-back + CATI "cooperation rate" was estimated to be about 78% (when the ACS was in test period), based on Census 2000, but this has been closer to 50%. b. The lack of tract-level controls (pop totals by age/sex/race) has resulted in an increase of 15-25% in the standard errors. c. In summary, the most current results show that the Coefficient of variation (C.V.) is 75% higher than the C.V. from the Census 2000 LF. The original estimate was that the ACS C.V. would be about 33% higher. This is consistent with our estimates that the sample size is about 50% the size of Census 2000 LF after 5 years of data accumulation. 9. Ramesh Dandekar from EIA presented a paper on why rounded values don't really protect confidentiality, and that by using Linear Programming, having the independently rounded table marginals and the rounded cell values, that he could guess many of the cell values exactly, and many of the other cells by 1. I think that because so many of the other cells were off by 1 or 2, that it would still meet the DRB protection of individual confidentiality. However, conceptually, his approach could be extended to use linear programming to solve for values across multiple tables, e.g. Table A: MOT by income combined with Table B: MOT by vehicles available, and then the numbers of cells with an exact match would likely increase. He used the CTPP2000 tables with rounded values as the example and did not have "real" data, but created an example of an unrounded table. Of course, he used a small table as the example, and how much computing power you would need to implement this on a real CTPP tabulation is not clear, but since computing power is cheap, I think it could be done if someone really wanted to try. The approach being taken by NCHRP 08-79 (please see the synopsis of this project in the August 2010 CTPP Status Report http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ctpp/sr1008.htm ) will avoid the use of rounding for disclosure protection. So, I hope that I haven't made any big errors, but if you find errors in my email, please let me know so that I can correct them! Elaine Murakami FHWA Office of Planning (Wash DC) 206-220-4460 (in Seattle)

15 years, 7 months

August 2010 CTPP Status Report now available

by Elaine.Murakami＠dot.gov

The August issue is now posted on the FHWA website at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ctpp/status.htm <http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ctpp/status.htm> . Elaine Murakami 206-220-4460

15 years, 7 months

Q & As on CTPP 2006-2008 Work Flow Data

by Liang Long

Most of you are aware that FHWA and AASHTO have released county-to-county and place-to-place work flow data in Cambridge Systematics FTP site a couple of days ago and some of you have either called me or sent me an email asking questions on these data files. I compiled typical questions and answers in the attached word file. Hopefully you will find this helpful. Liang Long Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 4800 Hampden Lane Suite 800 Bethesda, MD 20814 tel 301 347 9141 fax 301 347 0101 FHWA 202-366-6971 e-mail llong(a)camsys.com www.camsys.com

15 years, 7 months

CTPP2006-2008 Place-to-Place work flows are OUT!

by Liang.Long＠dot.gov

CTPP2006-2008 Place-to-Place flows using ACS are also available for downloading now! We have NOT included the CTPP2000 because of difficulties in matching FIPS codes for Places between 2000 and the current CTPP. Two data formats are available: SAS and CVS. A detailed note for dataset is also available. Check it out now! ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/Place%20Level/ Liang Long Federal Highway Administration Room 74-440 1200 New Jersey, SE Washington, DC 20590 tel 202 366 6971 fax 202 493 2198 e-mail liang.long(a)dot.gov <mailto:liang.long@dot.gov>

15 years, 7 months

Information from Caliper Corp

by Elaine.Murakami＠dot.gov

Note from Elaine: As you know, FHWA and AASHTO received the 2006-2008 CTPP files from the Census Bureau at the end of July. FHWA made one key table available and posted it on the Cambridge Systematics web page, originally on July 30, with a corrected version on August 2 (duplicate records were removed). ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/ <ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/> We are now working on making a Place-to-Place file (limited to the 2006-2008 CTPP) and should have it checked and available by early next week. As I might have mentioned before, this is a good example of "swiss cheese" since Places that fall below the 20,000 residence population threshold are missing, and unincorporated areas of counties are also missing (since they are not a "place.") Note from Caliper: For your convenience, Caliper Corporation has processed these data into two matrices, and one for the CTPP ACS 2006-2008 data (30MB) and one for the CTPP 2000 data (24MB). We have also provided the data in the form of ESRI personal and file geodatabases for ArcGIS users in your organization. All of these files can be downloaded from the Caliper User Center. If you are not a TransCAD User, you may register as a guest to obtain the data at http://usercenter.caliper.com <http://usercenter.caliper.com/> . We expect to make the full set of CTPP 2006-2008 tabulations available after they are released in September of this year.

15 years, 7 months

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