Hi All,
An Update.
The 2006 – 2008 ACS data have been released by the US Census
Bureau (CB) and the CTPP Special Tabulation has been developed and delivered.
(for the table list see: http://ctpp.transportation.org/Pages/ACSData.aspx)
This data set is the one we (the CTPP Program) are using to develop
the first CTPP product based on three year ACS Data.
In the next few months, I will try to keep this community apprised of
our progress on developing and releasing the data access software for the CTPP
based on three year ACS special tabulation that we purchased from CB.
We issued an RFP in June of 2009 with proposals due late July. The
contract was ultimate awarded to the Beyond 20/20 Citygate team. Work
commenced on software development in January 2010.
The preliminary software has gone through one round of alpha testing,
with beta originally scheduled to be the next round. It was decided after
alpha testing that another intermediate round of user testing should occur when
the software had greater functionality, but was still in a flexible, malleable
state.
The project is nearly ready for the next round of user testing,
identified as “alpha-prime”. The purpose of this round of
testing is to highlight the changes so far and to elicit feedback from
users.
Beyond 20/20 has received and started processing the data from
ACS. This data was due to be delivered by 30-Jun, but the final tables
were not received until 28-Jul. Sample data was provided by mid-June, so
Beyond 20/20 has been able to use this to continue development of the data
processing logic and for testing. The data in the first set of delivered
tables will be part of the alpha-prime testing.
Work on the additional features and customization is nearly complete,
with all functionality in the alpha-prime testing, except the export to shape
files (currently under development) and the thematic mapping. Work on the
Session Editor, the customization that will allow users to select geographies from
a map, is still in progress. It is essentially functionally complete, but
there are still many issues to be resolved.
A significant outstanding issue is how the Part 3 data will be
represented both in the Session Editor and in the tables themselves.
Based on input from CTPP, it appears that there will need to be data available
for Part 3 in which the flows are represented in two dimensions (residence and
workplace), but it may also be necessary to have a version with a single
dimension for those users who do not need to have them split. The
alpha-prime will demonstrate both approaches and the final decision on how to
represent the data will be made based on feedback from this testing.
The next contracted milestone is delivery of the beta release of the
package. There has been a request by CTPP for a new piece of
functionality to be added to the solution: export to Geodatabase
format. This format contains similar information to SHP files, but is
stored in a more up-to-date format in a Microsoft Access database. Beyond
20/20 and Citygate are working on a proposal that will identify the additional
cost/time required to add this.
I will send another update in a few weeks, if you have any questions,
do not hesitate to contact me on or off list.
Penelope Weinberger
CTPP Program Manager
AASHTO
202-624-3556
http://ctpp.transportation.org/Pages/default.aspx
It's just as bad to not make a plan as to blindly follow the
one you already have.